Sarah Westwood's Things You Don’t Yet Know You Feel is the winner of the 2020 Left Coast Composition Contest. Left Coast will perform the piece in our 2021-22 season.
Sarah Westwood (UK) composes music for dance, music-theatre, installation, and concert. Her work has been received in eleven European countries, across four continents, commissioned and awarded. This includes performances by Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Ensemble L'imaginaire Strasbourg, Prism Piano Trio Boston, and soloists Dan Thorpe, Aleksandra Demowska-Madejska, Jelena Makarova, and Karin Hellqvist, amongst others.
Sarah Westwood, photo credit James Harvey
She collaborates extensively with poet Georgie Lorimer, and dancers Eleven Farrer House (EFH). With Lorimer, collaborations include The Artist’s Kintsukuroi music-theatre work commissioned by Après l’Histoire, performed at Constellations Chicago; Into the Blank Expanse of Space for Carla Rees and Xenia Pestova, performed at Cheltenham Festival, published by Tetractys Publishing; and speaking within | fragmented lines for The Interstring Project, commissioned by Crossroads Festival Salzburg. Things You Don’t Yet Know You Feel is also in collaboration with Georgie Lorimer. This work was written for soprano Patricia Auchterlonie and Illuminate String Quartet, with a residency at Snape Maltings and a tour across the UK. With EFH, their most recent dance project copc was performed at Siobhan Davies Dance Studio London, and Dance Limerick Ireland. Previously, she was selected as a composer for Phoenix Dance Theatre’s inaugural Choreographers and Composers Lab Leeds, and a musician in ManiFeste’s In Vivio Danse Paris.
Notable attainments include being awarded the Bliss Trust Scholarship for artistic development to USA, selected for a Creative Retreat at The RedHouse Aldeburgh (supported by Britten-Pears Foundation), and a selected composer for ISCM World Music Days New Zealand 2020.
Sarah is studying for a PhD in composition at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is also a research assistant in ‘Embodied Approaches to Performing Experimental Music’. She has been mentored by Patricia Alessandrini, Kenneth Hesketh, and Lauren Redhead, with further mentorship from Chaya Czernowin, Toshio Hosokawa, Justė Janulytė, Andrew Lewis, Anton Lukoszevieze, and Katharina Rosenberger.
Alongside composing, Sarah is Director of Programmes at Estalagem da Ponta do Sol’s Contemporary Music and Electronic Residency Madeira, bringing expert practitioners and practising sound artists, composers and performers from varied backgrounds together. She is also a Co-Director for Illuminate Women’s Music. The project aims to promote the work of women composers and performers, performing across UK. Illuminate has received funding from Arts Council England, Ambache Charitable Trust, PRS Foundation, ISM, and RVW Trust.
