Her latest work premieres at the 2024 BBC Proms. But who is composer Anna Clyne?
Who is Anna Clyne?
Anna Clyne is a British-born, US-based acoustic and electro-acoustic composer, who draws on the connections between visual art and music. She has become one of the most prominent musicians working in this area in recent years.
According to Bachtrack, Clyne was the eighth most performed contemporary composer in the world in 2022, featuring alongside John Adams, Philip Glass and James MacMillan.
Since the pandemic she has been very prolific, writing 15 works in 2020 alone, including several large-scale ensemble pieces.
Clyne was composer-in-residence to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2010-11. She is currently composer-in-association with the BBC Philharmonic, a position she will hold until 2026. The first piece she wrote for the BBC Phil was Glasslands (2022), a saxophone concerto premiered by Jess Gillam and conductor Mark Wigglesworth at Nottingham Royal Concert Hall.
How old is Anna Clyne?
Clyne was born on 9 March 1980 and is 44 years old.
When did Anna Clyne more to America?
Clyne has lived in the US since 2001, currently in Hudson Valley, New York State.
‘I was at Edinburgh University, and I spent my third year as an exchange student at Queen’s University in Canada,' she told BBC Music Magazine. 'The academic year at Queen’s finishes early and Edinburgh starts quite late, so I went back via New York. I was waitressing and playing cello in rock bands and meeting lots of interesting composers, musicians, choreographers and film makers, and I just fell in love with it. As soon as I graduated from Edinburgh, I moved back to New York with just a suitcase and my cello.’
Who did Anna Clyne study composition with?
After moving to America, Clyne studied with Julia Wolfe, co-founder of Bang on a Can, the radical collective that transformed contemporary music in the US during the early 2000s. Clyne attended Bang on a Can’s summer programme at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
‘I feel grateful to people like Julia who laid the groundwork for me,’ says Clyne. ‘I’m part of a generation witnessing a big shift in terms of diversity, and I was lucky to have strong role models. When I was younger, I didn’t think of myself as a female composer; I was just a composer – that essence has stayed with me.’
How does Anna Clyne work?
Clyne works at an upright piano, with a laptop and digital score resting on a Singer sewing table. Her chair nestles into the right angle; a cup of coffee perches at the side.
How did Clyne compose Night Ferry, her 2012 work created alongside a huge painting?
To create Night Ferry (2012), the turbulent sea-washed soundscape inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Clyne placed large panels around her studio. Alternating between painting and composing, Clyne transferred the brushstrokes into notes – and vice versa – until the projects became co-creations, inextricably linked.
‘As the music evolved so did the mural, and as the mural evolved so did the music,’ she says. ‘At the end there was a 15 foot-long painting and a 25-minute composition. A lot of art uses some of the same structural elements as music. There’s gesture, rhythm, composition, shapes, intensity. Graphic scores can be very liberating’
Clyne's Night Ferry mural
The work was selected as one of the Ten Pieces, the BBC’s flagship educational resource for classical music.
Palette, another work composed alongside a large painting…
Since then, Clyne has continued to explore this composing method. She’s currently focussed on colours as part of the acrostic piece Palette, where seven movements are each devoted to plum, amber, lava, ebony, teal, tangerine and emerald.
‘I’m creating large canvases alongside the score,’ she says. ‘The piece draws on my love of abstract expressionism. I hope to share the artwork in some way as part of the audience’s experience of the music.’
Palette is due to be premiered early 2025 by the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stéphane Denève, followed by co-commissioners the New World Symphony and the National Orchestra Institute.
What are some of Clyne’s other recent works?
Color Field (2020) muses on the colour orange, from the tone used in Hermès’s iconic designs to Mark Rothko’s Orange, Red, Yellow (1961). From there, Clyne considered Scriabin’s synaesthesia – the experience of associating specific colours with pitch and tonal centres – and drew on the fiery hues the Russian composer associated with particular keys (orange was G).
ATLAS, Clyne’s first piano concerto – performed by Jeremy Denk and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall in 2024 – was inspired by Gerhard Richter, with music linked to the 5,000 photographs, drawings and sketches contained in four volumes.
Weathered is a clarinet concerto Clyne composed for Martin Fröst in 2022. Each of the five-minute movements highlight different weathered elements – ‘Metal’, ‘Heart’, ‘Stone’, ‘Wood’ and ‘Earth’.
When is Clyne’s composition The Gorgeous Nothings premiering at The Proms 2024?
Clyne’s The Gorgeous Nothings, based on Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems, premieres at the BBC Proms 2024 on 30 July. It’s performed by The Swingles and the BBC Philharmonic.
The piece uses a format called Augmented Orchestra, co-developed with Clyne’s husband Jody Elff, an audio engineer and sound artist. ‘It’s real-time processing of the orchestra,’ explains Clyne. ‘It transforms the sound, creating new versions of the instruments – all very closely integrated.
‘We have eight microphones within the orchestra – on the flutes, the oboes, first violin, double basses, percussion, and the bicycle wheel! We also have one on the vibraphone and one on the voices. It makes a wonderful sound.’