Review of My day in Hell in the Guardian
"The novelty was My Day in Hell by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, who won a Royal Philharmonic Society composition prize last year and this commission for the Dante Quartet was the result. Based on her first reading of the Divine Comedy, it is a 10-minute, single-movement piece, structured according to the numerology of Dante's descriptions of hell and purgatory, coming across as an almost nostalgic essay in writing expressive melody. The music is highly wrought, yet piled high with emotional content, and in a curious way it is very English-sounding too, not out of place alongside the rest of the programme.
Andrew Clements in The Guardian, 19th July 2008
Recording of Cheryl's new string quartet now online
You can here the Dante Quartet's performance of Cheryl's My day in Hell at the Cheltenham Festival on this page of BBC Radio 3's website. The performance will be available for seven days.
18th July 2008
BBC Radio 3 Broadcast on the 18th July at 1pm
Cheryl's new quartet, My day in Hell, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 1pm on the 18th July - see the BBC Radio 3 website for details.
July 2008
Ticket booking open for My day in Hell at the Cheltenham Festival
It is now possible to book tickets online for the Dante String Quartet's concert at the Pittville Pump Room on the 16th July, as part of the Cheltenham Festival. The concert will feature the world premiere of Cheryl' new string quartet. See the Festival Website for more information.
June 2008
Ticket booking open for Bouleumeta at the Presteigne Festival
Cheryl's new work for solo clarinet, Bouleumeta, will be premiered by Catriona Scott at the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts on Saturday 23rd August 2008. The venue will be the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Bleddfa. Postal booking is now open: see the Presteigne Festival Website for more details.
June 2008
Cheryl's debut CD to be released by Toccata Classics
Cheryl's debut CD will be released by Toccata Classics: see the label's website for more details. The CD will be released on the 24th July 2009 to coincide with Cheryl's CD launch concert in West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge on that date. What this space for more information in the coming months!
June 2008
Two more performances of The Ogre Lover
Cheryl's string trio, The Ogre Lover, will be performed by the Lendvai String Trio two more times this summer. Firstly, at a concert for 'Green Room Music' in Tunbridge Wells on the 21st June at 3pm, and secondly as part of the Burton Bradstock Festival on the 21st August.
June 2008
Cheryl's new string quartet to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3
Cheryl's new string quartet, called My day in Hell and based on excerpts of Dante's Divine Comedy will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the 18th July (time to be confirmed). This broadcast will be a recording of the Dante Quartet's concert in the Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham, as part of the Cheltenham Music Festival, on 16th July
May 2008
Cheryl wins an award from the PRS/Bliss Trust to help
produce her Debut CD
The PRS/Bliss Trust have awarded Cheryl funding to help pay for the Lendvai String Trio's recording of Memoria for oboe/cor anglais and piano quartet. Despite managing to raise a lot of money to help produce the CD, Cheryl is still well below budget if the CD is to be produced and released. Please see below for information on how you can donate money to help secure the production and release of this debut CD, or alternatively download this PDF file.
May 2008
My day in Hell to be premiered at the Cheltenham Festival this July
Cheryl's new string quartet, entitled My day in Hell and based on passages from Dante's The Divine Comedy, will be premiered by the Dante Quartet at the Cheltenham Festival this year. The Concert will take place in the Pitville Pump Room on the 16th July at 7.30, and will be recorded by BBC Radio 3 for future broadcast. See the Cheltenham Festival website for more information.
May 2008
Cheryl is awarded funding from the Nicholas Boas Trust to help produce her debut CD
The Nicholas Boas Charitable Trust has generously given Cheryl funding to pay for the Lendvai String Trio's recording of The Ogre Lover for string Trio. The trio will be recorded in Champs Hill in September.
April 2008
Cheryl's new arrangement of Mozart's Piano duet Sonata in F major to receive two performances
Cheryl's new arrangement of Mozart's Piano Duet Sonata for Clarinet, Bassoon, French Horn and String quintet will be premiered at Holy Trinity Church, Claygate, on the 24th May at 7.30pm. It will then be played at the Riverhouse Barn, Walton-on-Thames, on 18th June at 7.30pm. See the Riverside Barn's website for more details.
April 2008
Cheryl wins funding from the Hildon Foundation
The Hildon Foundation has generously awarded Cheryl funding to help produce her Debut CD, which will be recorded in September at Champs Hill in Sussex.
April 2008
Premiere of Bouleumeta for solo clarinet
Cheryl's new work, Bouleumeta, for solo clarinet, will be premiered by Catriona Scott at the Presteigne Festival in Wales on Saturday 23rd August at 11.30am in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Bleddfa. She will also be taking part in a pre-concert talk on 22nd August at 6pm in the Assembly Rooms, Presteigne. See the Presteigne Festival Website for more information.
March 2008
Cheryl wins an award from the RVW Trust to help produce her Debut CD
The RVW Trust have awarded Cheryl funding to help produce her new CD. The generous award from the Trust will go towards paying for the recording of Memoria for oboe/cor anglais and piano quartet, which will be played by Nicholas Daniel, the Lendvai String Trio and Alasdair Beaston.
March 2008
Cheryl Wins an Arts Council England grant to produce her debut CD
Cheryl has won a prestigious grant from the Arts Council England to produce a debut CD of her music. The CD will be recorded at Champs Hill, Sussex in September, and will be available from the following spring on Amazon, i-tunes, this website and the Music Chamber website. The CD will be produced by Ates Orga (a prize-winning producer who has worked for Warner, Hyperion and Brilliant Classics amongst others).
The performers
on the CD will include Nicholas Daniel, The Lendvai String Trio, Ensemble Na Mara, Thomas Carroll (cello), Natalie Raybould (soprano) and
the Kreisler Ensemble, conducted by Matilda Hofman. All of the musicians are in great demand, regularly performing in the top concert halls in London, the UK, and abroad.
Despite the Arts Council's tremendously generous grant, Cheryl still needs to find more funding in order to pay the musicians. “Everyone involved will put in hours and hours of practice and rehearsal, and the each composition on the CD will take a day to record, to make sure every note and phrase is perfect” says Cheryl. “Many of the performers on the CD have already reserved dates in their diaries and are willing to do the recordings for precious little, such is their enthusiasm for the new CD, but I'm determined to be able to give them adequate payment for the tremendous effort that each musician will put into this project. There is also the production of the CD's themselves to think about: I'm doing all I can to raise the funds and will put as much as my own money as I can into the project, but I'm still several thousand pounds below budget.”
In an attempt to help raise the rest of the money needed for the project to go ahead, Cheryl is keen to offer people the chance to get involved with the making of the CD. For a donation of £40 or more, you will receive a copy of the CD, signed by the composer and all the performers, and for larger donations, opportunities such as meeting all the performers, receiving free tickets to the CD launch concert, and even being able to sit in on the recording sessions themselves will be available. Everyone who contributes towards the making of the CD will have their name printed on the CD sleeve as a mark of the musician's gratitude If you would like to find out more about the CD, or give a financial contribution towards the CD production, please download this PDF or contact Cheryl via email or telephone (see the Contact section of this website).
February 2008
Scores available for purchase
Many of Cheryl's scores are now available for purchase, either as a PDF file sent via email, or in hard copy (spiral bound). Please see the "Contacts" page of this website for further details.
November 2007
New Solo clarinet work
Cheryl's new work for solo clarinet will be premiered at the Presteigne Festival by Catriona Scott in August 2008.
November 2007
New string quartet for the Dante Quartet
Cheryl's new work for string quartet, inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy will be premiered by the Dante Quartet at the 2008 Cheltenham Festival.
November 2007
Performance of Melancholia, London, 28th November
Melancholia, for piano trio will be performed by the London Mozart Trio at Goldsmiths Hall, London EC2V 6BN, on the 28th of November at 7pm, alongside Mendelssohn's Trio in D Minor, op. 49, and Beethoven's Archduke Trio. The concert is given in association with the Mendelssohn Society and the Mendelssohn Scholarship Trust. Please see the City Music Society website for more information.
8th October '07
Performance of Excelsus in Serbia
Excelsus for solo 'cello will be performed at "Interzone", the 8th International Contemporary Music Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, by Alfia Bekova on the 17th October at 9pm.
Cheryl wins one of the prizes in the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Composition Prize
Cheryl is one of the winners of the 2007 RPS Composition Prize and will be writing a chamber work for next year's Cheltenham Festival. There were seventy entrants for the competition, and the judges were Richard Causton, Deidre Gribbon and Christopher Fox. See the RPS website for more details.
9th July 2007
Cheryl's works selected to participate in the Raymond Weil New Talents Competition
Three of Cheryl's compositions have been selected to compete in the Raymond Weil New Music Talents Competition (the prize will be decided by public online vote between September and October 2007). Please visit the RV Talents section of the Raymond Weil site and vote for The Glory Tree, The Ogre Lover or My fleeting angel!
3rd July 2007
Review of the The Glory Tree performance in Kirkwell Cathedral, Orkney
It was another soprano, Natalie Raybould, who stole the show at Saturday lunchtime, performing with the Kreisler Ensemble under Matilda Hofman. Everything Raybould touched turned to gold, from pianist Iain Farrington's bluesy settings of Maya Angelou to her vocal and choreographic candenza on Maxwell Davies's adaptation of Purcell. The centrepiece was an astonishing tour de force written for her by Cheryl Frances-Hoad and sung entirely in Old English. The Glory Tree had remarkable scoring, stratospheric singing and was performed with shamanic authority, her final scream reverberating through the cloisters. With Sally Beamish's Commedia and Maxwell Davies's early landscape piece, The Bairns of Brugh, this was a concert of the essence of St Magnus clearly safe in young hands.
25th June 2007, Keith Bruce, The Herald
Many Moons reaches the final of the New England Philharmonic Orchestra competition
Cheryl's new work for orchestra, Many Moons, reached the final round of the New England Philharmonic Orchestra's call for scores 2007.
June 2007
Cheryl wins the Music Commission Wicklow County Council's Per Cent for Arts Scheme
Cheryl's proposal to write a piano concerto for Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra (of Co. Wicklow) has won the Music Commission from Wicklow Council. Her new piano concerto will be premiered in 2009 at three venues in Co. Wicklow. Please see Cheryl's new blog about the project for more information.
June 2007
Cheryl reaches the final in the Per Cent for Arts Scheme
Cheryl's proposal to write a piano concerto (for Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra, of Co. Wicklow) has reached the final round in a competition for funding from Wicklow County Council. The final interview takes place in late May, with the results to be announced in June.
May 2007
The Ogre Lover wins prize
Cheryl's string trio, The Ogre Lover, has won third prize in the 4th Sun River Composition Contest, China. The trio will be performed at the SiChuan Conservatory of Music later in the year.
April 2007
Excelsus performance in Malta
Excelsus for solo 'cello will be performed by Lucie Robinet at the International String Orchestra Festival in Malta (8th-16th April).
March 2007
The Glory Tree at St. Magnus Festival, Orkney
The Glory Tree will be performed by the Kreisler Ensemble at the St. Magnus Festival, Orkney, on the 26th June in Kirkwall Cathedral. See http://www.stmagnusfestival.com for details.
Piano Trio performance, 17th May
Ensemble na mara will perform Cheryl's My fleeting Angel in the Old Finsbury Town Hall, Rosebury Avenue, London, in a concert organised the Sargasso CD label and Sounds Underground.
String Trio receives four more perfomances
The Ogre Lover will be performed four more times by the Lendvai String Trio in the coming months: first at a private concert in Surrey, then in Warsaw on the 23rd April, Riga on the 25th April, and Stockholm on the 27th April.
Scores available at the BMIC
Many of Cheryl's scores are now available from the BMIC Library in London: see BMIC website for details.
February 2007
The freshness and individuality of the young, formidably qualified academically, Cheryl Frances-Hoad's trio (The Ogre Lover for string trio) impressed...
Peter Grahame Woolf, Musical Pointers, January 2007
The final day of concerts in the Park Lane Group’s New Year Series once again brought a blend of artistic excellence and enthusiasm, with two imaginative programmes of variety and substance. First up was the Lendvai String Trio, playing four works from the last thirty years. The most recent of these was a world premiere: Cheryl Frances-Head’s The Ogre Lover. A response to a Ted Hughes's poem, the work is a fusion of seven short movements completed last year. Its slower music finds melodic links to Berg in its use of tritones, while the lively faster music is often propelled by energetic cello lines. Cellist Marie Macleod it was who also supplied the evocative guitar effect with which the piece ends, a self-confessed whimsy on the part of the composer but one not outstaying its welcome.
Ben Hogward, Classicalsource.com, January 2007
Cheryl wins the International String Orchestra Festival Competition
Cheryl will have her winning work (Excelsus for solo 'cello) performed at the Festival in Malta in April 2007. There were seventy-nine entries from eighteen countries.
The head of the Jury Dr. Michael Zev Gordon described the composition as:
A work of broad emotional scope and a commanding formal fluidity. The four short interlinked movements demonstrate an impressive range of colours and moods - and through a fine control of pacing add up to considerably more than the sum of the parts. The writing for cello is demanding yet always idiomatic.
Information about the festival can be found at www.isofestival.com
13th December 2006
Collaboration with Opera Genesis
Cheryl is currently working with Bafta nominated writer Robin Chapman, artist Jill Booty and Opera Genesis at Covent Garden (ROH2) on The Singing Mountain Picture Show. Workshops will take place in March 2007, and if these go well Cheryl will hopefully get to compose her first full-length opera!
String Trio premiere at the Purcell Room
Cheryl's new work The Ogre Lover (for string trio) will be premiered at the Purcell Room (South Bank) on Wednesday 11th January 2007 by the Lendvai String Trio (a 6pm concert that is part of the Park Lane Young Artists New Year series). It will also be played at Marden House (Wiltshire) as part of the Calne Music and Arts Festival (21st January) and at the Abbey School, Woodbridge, (28th January).
Cheryl's new work, The Dream Bearer, has been selected as a finalist in the 24th ALEA III International Composition Competition, 2006. This year six works have been selected from among 200 submissions. All the finalists' work will be premiered during a special concert on the 30th September 2006 , in the Tsai Performance Center, Boston.
August 2006
Cheryl wins the Adam Prize
Cheryl has won the Adam Prize at Kings College London for her song cycle The Glory Tree. The prize is for the best piece of work (including compositions) submitted to the Head of Department by the end of December each year
March 2006
“Frances-Hoad, an Englishwoman born in 1980, won the $10,000 prize with My Fleeting Angel, inspired by a Sylvia Plath story. In three movements, played without pause and running less than nine minutes, it received a bravura performance from Niskala, Kluksdahl and violinist Carolyn Stuart. Frances-Hoad, who was in residence at USF for a lecture and master class and the concerts, is clearly a young composer with a bright future.
Her trio combines sturdy, compact craft with dashing flamboyance. There are keening harmonies in the strings, a romantic violin solo, a delicious off-kilter waltz, a nimble piano part and a surprisingly large sound at times, all propelled by relentless rhythmic drive. Helps would have loved it. Frances-Hoad's trio and the rest of Tuesday's program will be repeated Saturday by the same musicians at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.”
John Fleming, The St. Petersburg Times (Florida), 17th February 2006
Cheryl wins the 2006 Robert Helps International Composition Competition
My fleeting Angel (for piano trio) will receive its world premiere at the University of South Florida in Tampa on February 14, 2006 and a repeat performance in New York City's Merkin Hall on February 18, 2006. The performers will be the USF faculty piano trio: Carolyn Stuart, violin; Scott Kluksdahl, cello; Naomi Niskala, piano. The winner receives a $10,000 prize including a week residency at the University of South Florida. See here for more details.
“The most striking event in the concert at Spitalfields on 12 June was yet another quartet, this time a mixed consort of oboe (Nicholas Daniel), strings and piano (Schubert Ensemble), commissioned specially from the 23-year-old Cheryl Frances-Hoad. A tricky combination, particularly in the acoustic of Christ Church (more spectacular and Piranesi-esque than ever at the moment, the galleries stripped down to their skeleton, preparatory to restoration). Frances-Hoad has solved both problems by luminous textures and plentiful doublings, often producing an uncanny effect of more instruments than those in play. More inexplicable still, how such care for pellucidity should have been compatible with such sophisticated formal and procedural content, often intricate in argument, sometimes impassioned, sometimes mercurial, always compelling in its authority.”
Robin Holloway, The Spectator, 29th June 2002
“The overall standard was high…But this just made for vague uniformity: everything was similarly bright, shiny, whimsical. The two exceptions, whose greater intensity propelled the notes from within to communicate emotion as well as pattern or process, were Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Tread Softly and Jonathan Powell’s Saturnine.”
Robin Holloway, The Spectator, 29th July 2000
“At a time when it is harder and harder for young composers to establish a distinctive voice - too many styles, too much music easily available to them - Frances-Hoad's approach is individual, quirky perhaps, but distinctly special.”
Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 29th November, 2004
“Cheryl Frances-Hoad's Memoria, premiered by the oboist Nicholas Daniel and the Schubert Ensemble, proved a skilfully written, if at times rather insistently overwrought, 15-minute piece. At only 22, Frances-Hoad already demonstrates that she has considerable potential.”
Robert Maycock, The Independent, 8th September, 2000
...In the premiere of Frances-Hoad's rhapsodic requiem, Excelsus, he [Thomas Carroll] and the music were as one in using the cello's natural temperament to explore telling emotion.
Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph, 23rd October 2002
“…Emma Fielding, principal oboist of the Cambridge based Britten Sinfonia, expertly performed Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s specially commissioned work for solo oboe and string orchestra, A Refusal to Mourn. This was an extremely impressive piece and indicated why Cheryl, an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius College, is already having her music commissioned, performed and broadcast by leading ensembles throughout the world. A Refusal to Mourn will undoubtedly find its place in the oboe repertoire and she is definitely a young composer to look out for”
Howard Leithead, Double Reed News, spring 2001
“The surprise of the evening was surely the midway offering - Cheryl Frances-Hoad's Melancholia, commissioned by this trio and proving an interesting, I might say intriguing, work. Sometimes it was quite moving, often thoughtful and certainly occasionally disturbing.”
Jim Howie, Chester Chronicle, 21st November 2003
“The new work, Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Broken Lines is a delight. Subtitled 'a sonata for opera' it takes three unrelated Pinter sketches and brings them together in the form of a three-movement sonata. Musically, Broken Lines is extremely effective with assured and original orchestral writing, sharp rhythmic vocal lines and a sound world that both fits the text and sheds new light on it. Particularly impressive is the 2nd scene love song (described by the composer as "the big slushy aria" which uses cluster harmonies to create a real sense of modernist lyricism, to contrast with the brilliant mechanistic rhythms of the final act. The sparse, minimalist setting was extremely successful, and all three singers handled the music extremely well, with special credit going to the excellent John Saunders”
Joseph Finlay, Varsity, 23/11/2001
“…to open proceedings, we were treated to a wonderfully heady aperitif from Cheryl Frances-Hoad, an Mphil composition student at Caius. Broken Lines takes three Pinter ‘sketches’ in which everyday situations are given characteristically surreal twists. Dramatically, this prepared us well for The Turn of the Screw [which was to follow] and I also felt that Britten’s (benevolent!) spirit was palpable in the astute word-setting and fastidiously stylish instrumentation…Jon Saunders, as a delightfully odious manager, coped admirably with his high-lying part and Rebecca Rudge was well cast both as vicious secretary and sexy mystery-woman. It was perhaps most rewarding, at this first hearing, simply to tune into the score: in turn lush, mercurial, obsessive and endlessly inventive. It is no mean feat to write an opera in your early twenties and Broken Lines will enjoy, I hope, a long life and many friends.”
John Reid, The Cambridge Student, 22nd November 2001
“Young blue notes writer scores BBC hit …Fifteen year old Cheryl Frances-Hoad won the commission at a Lloyds Bank Young Composer Workshop in Manchester at which the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra gave the first performance of her concertino for ‘cello, piano and percussion. The piece, written when she was fourteen and blending deep melancholy and exuberant syncopation, won almost universal adulation, with orchestra members thumping music stands with their bows and applause from conductor Maryn Brabbins… “I think the concertino is wonderful,” said a wide-eyed John Casken, a composer and professor of music at the University of Manchester who was Ms Frances-Hoad’s tutor during the four-day workshop. “In the final chorale she adds blue notes to tighten the emotional screw and make the end more heart-rending.” The concertino took a month to write and was finished the day before the workshop entries were due in. “It was my first orchestral work,” admitted Ms Frances-Hoad, a cellist and pupil at the Yehudi Menuhin School for seven years. “I’d never written for percussion and had to get all the information I wanted out of a book.” The information was accurate enough to send the Philarmonic’s percussion section dancing round their bongos in an extrovert passage that would set Copland or Berstein smiling.”