Siobhan grew up in London with a father who was a renowned big band performer. She loved the excitement and rhythm of Big Band music but she was most enamored by the expansive emotions, colours and textures of classical music. Her fascination with the stories and atmospheres classical music could create, led her to train as a classical flute player at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She went on to pursue a successful flute playing career, freelancing with London orchestras, working as a studio musician and playing West End shows. Memorable moments in her ten year flute playing career was that she performed all the major flute concertos for Richard Hickox at the St Endellion Music Festival and was the featured soloist on Richard Rodney Bennet’s ‘Jazz Calendar’ for the Royal Ballet. Siobhan’s great love was performing chamber music and giving solo recitals. Something that she has started doing again this year.
In 1996 Siobhan embarked on an English and Theatre Arts degree at Goldmiths college University of London. This period of creative study led her to realise the potential for storytelling within music composition. After graduation she began to focus on working as a composer and has since written for dance, film/media, and concert projects of her own music.
In 2006 Siobhan composed the music for the children’s movie ‘Tom’s Christmas Tree’. Film director Robert Worley said of working with Siobhan ”The finished score absolutely transformed the film, and to me, one of the most thrilling parts in the entire project.”
Siobhan has also been a composer for ‘Betrachten Dance’, a contemporary dance company, where she worked with profoundly deaf choreographer Joanna Dunbar and composed for ‘Fallen’ part of the ‘Cultural Shift Festival’ for East London Dance.
The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music commissioned Siobhan to write a piece for the “Spectrum” series which is currently on their grade 6 exam syllabus.
Siobhan has experience of working with musicians from many different genres. She created an arrangement of ‘Round Midnight’ for celebrated Jazz trumpeter Randy Brecker, recorded by the Danish Radio Big Band on his Grammy nominated album.
Siobhan was commissioned by Marsden International Jazz Festival to write ‘Meditations’. This is an acoustic piece with an evocative and explorative mix of different and distinctive sounds which is written to poems around the themes of Love, Loss, Hope, Joy, and Peace and celebrates landscape and sound. She was inspired by the desire to draw an improvised sound into a classical setting, and she wanted to create a room to pause and reflect and a space to explore silence and sound. In the piece she created the musical dialogue by weaving together the lines of a string quartet, a vocal group specialising in medieval chant, a harpist, a percussionist from the world music tradition, as well as for one section the pure sound of a children’s choir. The whole piece came to life with the interaction of the soloist trumpeter Gerard Presencer’s rich and moving improvisation.
Through the mirror Tales from Childhood. A retelling of Aesops Fables. Written for The Suoni Ensemble.
The Brazen roar. A huge community project with The Philharmonia Orchestra of London, scored for Children’s Choir, Large Ensemble of both Children and professionals and Steam Engine!
A joint commission from the Grammy award winning WDR Big Band and WDR Symphonic Chorus, telling the Oscar Wilde story of The Nightingale and the Rose.
The Red Shoes for Danmarks Radio commissioned for her own Suoni Ensemble featuring Marilyn Mazur, with tap dancer. As well as composing the music Siobhan directed this piece, that was created for musicians to perform from memory and to act and move with the dancer. It was performed to 2,000 children
Siobhan conducts most of the performances herself apart from one notable exception, Home, an intimate piece commissioned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra, performed in the Irish National Concert Hall Dublin and conducted by world renowned Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud.
In 2023 Siobhan created the opera Times Up King Canute for the Copenhagen Opera Festival. As well and composing and conducting the score Siobhan was hired to direct the project and was able to bring her education and experience with drama into the work. She feels that creating this new work has been a bringing together of her life’s skills, talents and experiences up until today.
Siobhan has lived in Denmark since 2009 and loves it! Four years ago Siobhan and her husband bought a farm in Langeland where they Have created the Suoni Gard Music festival of which she is Artistic Director.
Links
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/0CpswANluEK3fiXvoqsgse
Meditations (Naxos)
The Nightingale and the Rose (Naxos)
Through the Mirror, Tales from Childhood (Naxos)
The Red Shoes (Dacapo)
Tom’s Christmas tree