Sally Beamish will be featured as 'Composer of the Week' on BBC Radio 3 from 27th Feb--2nd March 2012

Sally Beamish is known internationally as a concert composer. She has received commissions from the USA, Japan, Australia, Scandinavia and Europe, and her music has been broadcast worldwide.
 
She was born in London in 1956 and started writing music and playing the piano at an early age. She later studied viola at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she also received composition lessons from Anthony Gilbert and Sir Lennox Berkeley. She went on to study in Germany with the Italian violist Bruno Giuranna.
 
Although she always considered herself primarily a composer, for a decade her career centred on the viola, particularly as a member of the Raphael Ensemble, with whom she made four discs of string sextets. Many opportunities to develop her compositional skills arose from her playing with the London Sinfonietta and Lontano; through this she became acquainted with many prominent composers, gaining valuable insights into their music and working methods.
 
In 1989 she received an Arts Council Composer’s Bursary, and moved from London to Scotland, where she and cellist Robert Irvine, founded the Chamber Group of Scotland, with co-director James MacMillan, and where Beamish’s career as a composer really began to flourish. Since moving to Scotland she has received a steady stream of commissions, and in 1994 and 1995 was Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ assistant on the SCO composers’ course in Hoy. In September 1994 she received the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for outstanding achievement in composition. In 2001 Sally Beamish was the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Music (DMus) from Glasgow University, for her services to musical life in Scotland.
 
Her orchestral output is considerable, and the concerto form is a continuing source of inspiration to her. She has written concertos for violin (Anthony Marwood/ BBCSSO), three for viola (Philip Dukes, Proms 1995, London Mozart Players, Tabea Zimmermann/ Swedish and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Lawrence Power/Scottish Ensemble), cello (Robert Cohen/Academy of St. Martin in the Fields), oboe (Douglas Boyd/ Premiere Ensemble), saxophone (John Harle/St Magnus Festival)/ Swedish Chamber Orchestra), trumpet (Håkan Hardenberger/ National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, Proms 2003, percussion (Evelyn Glennie/Tromsø Symphony Orchestra in 2004, flute (Sharon Bezaly/Royal Scottish National Orchestra, 2005) and in 2006, commissioned in honour  of her 50th birthday, a concerto for accordion (James Crabb/ Hallé Orchestra, at the Cheltenham Festival).

She is also much commissioned by chamber groups, and her third string quartet will be premiered by the Elias Quartet at the BBC Proms 2011.
 
She has been championed since 1999 by the Swedish label BIS who have recorded many of her works to consistently enthusiastic reviews. A CD of larger orchestral music has recently been released by the RSNO with Martyn Brabbins, featuring soloists Anthony Marwood and Sharon Bezaly. Her arrangement of Debussy pieces as a suite for cello and orchestra is also now available on BIS, featuring Steven Isserlis and the Tapiola Sinfoietta conducted by Gabor Takács-Nagy. 

Beamish is also active in writing for non-professional forces, as well as for theatre. She has written a children’s nativity musical, as well as works for amateur strings and full orchestra. The stage musical, “Shenachie”, written with Donald Goodbrand Saunders, was premiered by her local amateur theatre company in 2006 and reached the finals of the Highland Quest, a Cameron Mackintosh competition with Eden Court Theatre Inverness.
  
She has worked for BBC Radio Manchester and Radio Scotland as a presenter of music programmes, and has written several scores for film and television, one of which won a Scottish BAFTA in 2003 for Best Composer.
 
Recent works include a concerto for the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, and a BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra commission to celebrate the symphonies of Brahms.

Her new concerto for cellist Robert Cohen, The Song Gatherer, received its premiere in Minneapolis 2009 with the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vanska. The UK premiere with the Hallé under Sir Mark Elder was broadcast  in December 2010.  Her next concerto is for  percussionist Colin Currie, with the Bergen Symphony Orchestra, Scottish and Swedish Chamber Orchestras, and Stanford Lively Arts California USA. She is also working on several projects with Psappha, Celtic Connections, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightentment, the Elias Quartet, St. Magnus Festival and saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who has recently performed two of her concertos.

With composer Alasdair Nicolson, Sally Beamish co-directs the annual St. Magnus Composer's Course.