We are delighted to announce the winners of our three Emergent – A Music Legacy commissions, funded by Help Musicians UK and in partnership with DaDaFest and Carousel.
We had a fantastic response to the call out from a variety of artists covering different music genres, instruments, styles and areas.
The three winning musicians are:
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Ewan Mackay
Ewan says: “I am a composer living, studying and composing in Cruden Bay – in the North East of Scotland. My work is Neo-Impressionist in style – drawing on inspiration from composers such as James MacMillan, Toru Takemitsu, Claude Debussy and others. With this project, I hope to have an entirely new conversation with my audience, one where they become the composers, and as the development will be for the most part random, I would hope to demonstrate that composition does not need to be complex and can be achieved by anyone.”
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Dike Okoh
Dike has worked professionally as a composer and teaches, amongst other things, singing and songwriting. We asked Dike about how he was approaching his work and he said “I’m currently exploring how music technology informs thought and how thought informs music technology and composition. I am interested in how at its best music is able to remake the world, showing it to us anew.”
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Robyn Steward
Robyn was born in 1986 and grew up in rural Suffolk . She started playing the cornet ( smaller version of the trumpet) aged 8 , but classical training was not best suited to Robyn’s abilities and worked against her . After a long break she joined a beginners big band and learned scales by ear. She learned improvisational techniques and then became enthralled with technology and the trumpet, which allowed her to express her ideas.
Daryl Beeton, head of Arts & Collaborations at Drake Music commented:
“We are delighted to welcome all three commissionees to the Emergent programme.
It is really exciting to discover talented new musicians like Robyn, Dike and Ewan, and to be able to offer them an opportunity to create new work.
We are really looking forward to hearing how they interpret our theme of “Music and Audiences” and to sharing their new compositions in 2019.”
Look out for interviews with the artists coming up on our blog soon!
To read about last year’s Emergent programme, visit our blog.
