Alwynne Pritchard

Alwynne Pritchard (born 1968 in Glasgow) is a British performer, composer, artist and curator based in Bergen, Norway. Her recent work, has increasingly explored relationships between musical expression and the human body and she has appeared as an actor, vocalist and physical performer in a number of stage productions, as well as developing choreography for performances of her own pieces. She is co-founder of the music-theatre company Neither Nor and Artistic Director of the BIT20 ensemble.

Born in Glasgow in 1968, Alwynne began having composition lessons as a teenager with her father, Gwyn Pritchard. She went on to study with Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music, and later with Melanie Daiken, Justin Connolly and Michael Finnissy at the Royal Academy of Music, where she was awarded many prizes for her work. During this time she also studied voice with the mezzo-soprano Linda Hirst.

In 1997, Alwynne was awarded a research scholarship by the University of Bristol and in 2003 received a PhD in composition. In the summer of 2000 Alwynne was awarded a Visions of Norway scholarship for a two-month artist’s residency at the Kulturhuset USF Verftet, Bergen and later returned for an extended residency three years later. In April 2007, she completed a one-year residency at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Bavaria after which she spent a year living in Berlin; from June until August 2010, she was resident at PointB Worklodge, New York; and in 2012 she was Artist in Residence (with Thorolf Thuestad) at the Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) in Los Baños, Philippines.

In 2002, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the first performance of Alwynne’s orchestral work Critical Mass, and in March 2007 her piano concerto Map of the Moon was premiered by Nicolas Hodges and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Decoy, created at the Heinrich Strobel Stiftung, Freiburg, in 2005 for the Donaueschingen Musiktage, was awarded the special prize given by the Foundation Ton Bruynèl, STEIM and the Foundation GAUDEAMUS. Commissions in the last ten years have seen Alwynne’s work move more frequently in the direction of music-theatre, and have included Frame, for the Athelas Sinfonietta Denmark, live electronics, tape and film as part of the European Integra project, premiered at the Sound Around festival, Copenhagen, in October 2007; Don’t touch me, you don’t know where I’ve been, for her own voice, Norwegian flautist Bjørnar Habbestad, asamisimasa ensemble and live electronics (developed by Thorolf Thuestad at BEK in Bergen) premiered at the Borealis festival in March 2008; Flutterby, for electric guitar and two computers for Luc Houtkamp’s POW ensemble; Objects of Desire, for ensemble recherche, premiered at the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, in October 2010; and Oslo Emmaus, for Ensemble Fanfaronner, premiered at the Borealis festival in March 2011.

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