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Composer of the Month Lynne Plowman

The broad span of Lynne Plowman’s music reaches from the grandeur of large-scale orchestral works and theatrical scores to the intimacy of solo instrumental pieces. Her works have been performed extensively throughout the UK and commissioners and collaborators have included Glyndebourne, the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC National Orchestra of Wales. In recent years her music has increasingly enjoyed international recognition with Clarion Call (commissioned by the French contemporary music group, Ensemble Télémaque) receiving a number of performances in the south of France in 2021 and Small World (commissioned by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Merian Ensemble) being premiered in Atlanta in March 2022. A CD recording of Small World by the Merian Ensemble will be released later in the year.

She is perhaps best known for her stage works which include Gwyneth and the Green Knight. Written for family audiences it landed her a British Composer Award and was praised by The Times as ‘One of the most brilliantly accomplished new operas I have heard in many a year’. She has since created three further operas including Captain Blood’s Revenge (commissioned by Glyndebourne in 2012) and The Face in the Mirror (commissioned in 2011 by Welsh National Opera) which was produced in a new French translation, by Opéra-Théâtre Junior in Geneva in 2023.

Plowman lives in the Vale of Glamorgan and the influence of her rural surroundings as well as a deep concern about the climate crisis are often heard in her music. During lockdown she was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to create Songbird for solo flute which in turn inspired a series of pieces featuring birdsong, including Bird Music for recorder and piano and Dances with Bells and Birds which was premiered by Elena Cholakova at the 2023 Prague Piano Festival. A new CD recording of the latter is due for release on the US label, New Focus Recordings in 2024.

Beyond her work as a composer, Plowman is established as a highly respected teacher and mentor and has taught composition at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for more than twenty years. A passionate champion of music in schools, she is the resident composer of the Dyfed Young Composers scheme and in 2022 was awarded the Welsh Music Guild’s prestigious Joseph Parry Award ‘for her exceptional contribution to musical education in Wales’.

Plowman is currently as busy as ever with a host of performances taking place in March. Principal among these is The Wind Sweepers which features in UPROAR’s spring tour.

upcoming performances

01.03.24 Small World

Manchester University Contemporary Music Ensemble

Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL 

▶ info

08.03.24 maggie and millie and molly and may

A Female Perspective - a discovery of women's voices through time; extracts from letters written over centuries woven into beautiful music by female composers

Urban Crofters, Crofts Street, Cardiff CF24 3DZ

▶ info

04.03.24; 15.03.24; 22.03.24; 30.04.24 Logs and Shells (from 'A Field Guide to Pebbles')

Welsh National Opera schools concerts
Cardiff, Llandudno, Southampton & Plymouth

▶ info

07.03.24; 22.03.24; 23.02.24 The Wind Sweepers

UPROAR tour

Aberystwyth, Merthyr Tudful & Rhosygilwen

▶ info

26.08.24 New work for harp and string orchestra (co-commissioned by the Presteigne Festival & Grand Teton Music Festival, USA)

Anne Denholm, harp

Presteigne Festival

▶ Lynne Plowman: The Wind Sweepers

▶ lynneplowman.co.uk

▶ Lynne Plowman tracks on Spotify

▶ Lynne Plowman Composer's Edition publications

▶ Lynne Plowman Wise Music Classical publications

▶ Composer of the Month

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