Cheryl Frances-Hoad
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Cheryl Frances-Hoad (born 1980) is an English composer.
Cheryl Frances-Hoad graduated from Gonville and Caius College Cambridge with a triple 1st in 2001 and an Mphil (with Distinction) in Composition, also at Cambridge. She has recently submitted PhD in Composition at Kings College (with a Viva date of 31st January 2007) where she studied with Dr. Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin. She began composing at the age of eight while studying ‘cello and piano at the Yehudi Menuhin School, and since then has won several prizes, including the Purcell Composition Prize, The Bach Choir Carol Competition, the BBC Young Composers Workshop 1996, the Cambridge Composer’s Competition, the Birmingham Conservatoire Composition Competition and the Robert Helps Prize. She has had two ballets choreographed by Lynn Seymour and Geoffrey Cauley; the second was performed by Scottish Ballet in the Britten Theatre, London. Her commissions include works for the BBC, the Surrey Philharmonic, the Manchester International ‘Cello Festival, the Chard Festival of Women in Music, the Bass Club, Bass Fest and the Almeida Festival, and her music has been featured on BBC2, ITV, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM.
In 2000 the Cambridge Music Festival commissioned a work to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s death, which was performed by the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Nicholas Daniel. In November 2001 Cheryl had her first Chamber Opera, broken lines: sonata for opera premiered by the New Cambridge Opera Group, as part of the Britten@25 Festival, with generous funding from the R.V.W. Trust. June 2002 saw two premieres: the Spitalfields Festival commission (a work for Nicholas Daniel and the Schubert Ensemble, with funding from the Foyle Foundation), and a piano trio for the London Mozart Trio at the Wigmore Hall. October 2002 saw another premiere at the Wigmore Hall, with a solo ‘cello work for Thomas Carroll and Y.C.A.T, and a commission from the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.
Cheryl was one of six featured composers in Tete a Tete’s opera project Family Matters (based on Beaumarchais’ third Figaro play The Guilty Mother) with a libretto by Olivier-Award winner Amanda Holden: workshops took place in Battersea Arts Centre in September 2003, with the final opera being staged throughout February 2004 at the Bridewell Theatre, followed by twelve performances around the country. (The RVW Trust also assisted this venture). In June The Glory Tree, a song cycle for the Kreisler Ensemble (inspired by Shamanic rituals and sung entirely in Old English) was premiered in the South Bank’s Fresh Series in the Purcell Room.
Her new string trio, The Ogre Lover will be premiered at the Purcell Room in January 2007. In February 2007 Cheryl will begin work on her first full-length opera, The Singing Mountain Picture Show. Commissioned by Opera Genesis (the contemporary opera branch of the Royal Opera House) with a libretto by Robin Chapman (former president of the Marlow Society and Bafta-nominated playwright) and paintings by Jill Booty, this ninety-minute work will be premiered in the Clore Studio (at the Royal Opera House) in the 2008-9 season.
Cheryl is the holder of the Mendelssohn Scholarship 2002, the Bliss Prize 2002, joint winner of the Harriet Cohen Award 2002, and has also received awards from Cambridge University, the Newby Trust, the Earls Colne Educational trust and the Sidney Perry Foundation. She has recently submitted PhD in Composition at Kings College (with a Viva date of 31st January 2007) where she studied with Dr. Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin. In February 2006, after winning the $10,000 Robert Helps Prize with My fleeting Angel, (for piano trio) Cheryl became Composer-in-Residence at the University of South Florida for a week, where she gave a two-hour lecture about her work, and a masterclass for both undergraduate and postgraduate composition students.
Cheryl is also an experienced transcriber (having just completed all the transcriptions for Dr. Ruth Davis’s (Cambridge University) new book, A Musical Ethnography of Palestine), and has several arrangements of Dvorak Slavonic Dances for String Octet published by Merton Music.
