Composer in Residence 2024/25: Cheryl Frances-Hoad

The Festival Musikdorf Ernen promotes new music. Every year a composer receives a commission for a new work with the opportunity to spend 3 months working in Ernen.

For the Festival Musikdorf Ernen, Cheryl Frances-Hoad will write a string quartet.

Cheryl Frances-Hoad

With the choice of Cheryl Frances-Hoad, the Musikdorf Ernen is supporting a composer whose music is as imaginative as it is accessible. The project thus raises awareness of a voice in new music that can make a major contribution to increasing interest in new music in general among broad sections of the public.

The following works of Cheryl Frances-Hoad will be performed at the Festival Musikdorf Ernen:

Sunday, 20 October 2024, 2pm | with students of the Music University HEMU Valais
«My Day in Hell» for String Quartet (2008)

Saturday, 9 August 2025, 6p
New Work for String Quartet – Commissioned by the Festival Musikdorf Ernen

More performances of works by Cheryl Frances-Hoad will be announced later.

Biography

Cheryl Frances-Hoad was born in Essex in 1980 and received her musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, and Kings College London. Her music has been described as «like a declaration of faith in the eternal verities of composition» (The Times), with «a voice overflowing not only with ideas, but also with the discipline and artistry necessary to harness them» (The Scotsman).

Admired for her originality, fluency and professionalism, Cheryl Frances-Hoad has been composing to commission since she was fifteen. Classical tradition (she trained as a cellist and pianist) along with diverse contemporary inspirations including literature, painting and dance, have contributed to a creative presence provocatively her own.

Recent projects include Your servant, Elizabeth, commissioned by the BBC Proms for the ‘Platinum Jubilee’ Prom on 22nd July 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall. The work, which paid homage to both Queen Elizabeth II and William Byrd, was picked by Ivan Hewett in The Telegraph as the highlight of the 2022 Proms season: «like all the best ‘classical music’, it was fresh and surprising, yet rooted in tradition, and gave plenty of hope that an embattled art form has plenty of life in it yet».

Cheryl was composer-in-residence at Presteigne Festival 2019 and was Associate Composer at Oxford Lieder Festival from 2019-2021: her half-hour song cycle, everything grows extravagantly, written with poet Kate Wakeling was premiered by baritone Marcus Farnsworth and Libby Burgess in 2021 at St. John the Evangelist, Oxford and was chosen as one of the five best classical events of 2021 by The Times.

Chosen to be a featured composer on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Composer of the Week’ (Five under 35, March 2015), her works have garnered many awards, from the BBC Lloyds Bank Composer of the Year award when she was just 15 to more recently The RPS Composition Prize, The Mendelssohn Scholarship, and three Ivor Novello (formally BASCA) British Composer Awards.

Cheryl has released six celebrated CDs of her music, and her works currently feature on 28 other discs. Her recent disc of vocal music, Magic Lantern Tales, has been highly praised: «the longer you listen to this beautifully crafted CD (…) the deeper you fall under its spell» (SWR2 Treffpunkt Klassik, Germany).

The music of Cheryl Frances-Hoad is published by Chester Music Limited, part of Wise Music Group. Go to Cheryl's Music page to find out more about her music by category.

Website of the composer

Read also our articles about past Composers in Residence and other composers in the Musikdorf Ernen: