Sally Beamish

Sally Beamish (born 26 August 1956, London) is a British composer of chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music.

Beamish studied the viola at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she received lessons from Anthony Gilbert and Lennox Berkeley. She later studied in Germany with the Italian violinist Bruno Giuranna.

As a violist in the Raphael Ensemble, she recorded four discs of string sextets. However, it was as a composer that she made her mark, particularly after moving from London to Scotland. She has written a large amount of music for orchestra, including two symphonies and several concertos (for violin, viola, cello, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, percussion, flute and accordion). She has also written chamber and instrumental music, film scores, theatre music, and music for amateurs.

In September 1993 Beamish received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for outstanding achievement in composition. In 1994 and 1995 she co-hosted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) composers' course in Hoy with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

From 1998 to 2002 she was composer in residence with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the SCO, for whom she wrote four major works.

Forthcoming projects include a third viola concerto, for Lawrence Power and the Scottish Ensemble, and concertos for the Rascher saxophone quartet, and cellist Steven Isserlis.

She lives in Gartmore, Stirlingshire with her cellist husband Robert Irvine and their children.

Works

• The Lost Pibroch (1991) for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
• Winter Journey (1996) and Mary's Precious Boy (1999) are Nativity musicals for pre-school and primary school children
• Monster (1996), an opera based on the life of Mary Shelley, commissioned by the Brighton Festival and Scottish Opera, with a libretto by Scottish novelist Janice Galloway
• Black, White and Blue (1997) for harpsichord and string quartet
• Caledonian Road (1997), commissioned by the Glasgow Chamber Orchestra
• The Day Dawn (1997), commissioned by Contemporary Music-Making for Amateurs
• No I'm Not Afraid (1998)
• Awuya (1998) for harp
• Sun and Moon (1999), a unpublished dance project for pre-school children, with choreography by Rosina Bonsu
• Knotgrass Elegy (2001) commissioned by the BBC Proms
• Trumpet concerto for Håkan Hardenberger and the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, was performed at the Proms in 2003.
• Trance o Nicht (2004), a concerto for percussionist Evelyn Glennie, received its premiere in the Northern Lights Festival, Tromsø
• Flute concerto (2005), commissioned by the RSNO, was premiered and recorded by Sharon Bezaly in 2005
• Shenachie, a stage musical with writer Donald Goodbrand Saunders, about the Highlands of Scotland, premiered in Gartmore in May 2006.

Sources

• "Impulse Classical Music Website: Sally Beamish". Retrieved 2006-05-18.
• "Scottish Music Centre: Sally Beamish". Retrieved 2006-05-18.