Cheryl Frances-Hoad

Who is Cheryl Frances-Hoad?

Cheryl Frances-Hoad is a British composer. She graduated from Gonville and Caius College with a triple 1st in 2001 and an MPhil in Composition, also at Cambridge.

She began composing at the age of eight while studying cello and piano at the Yehudi Menuhin School, and since then has won several prizes, including the Purcell Composition Prize, The Bach Choir Carol Competition, the BBC Young Composers Workshop 1996, the Cambridge Composer's Competition, the Birmingham Conservatoire Composition Competition and the Robert Helps Prize.

She has had two ballets choreographed by Lynn Seymour and Geoffrey Cauley; the second was performed by Scottish Ballet in the Britten Theatre, London. Her commissions include works for the BBC, the Surrey Philharmonic, the Manchester International Cello Festival, the Chard Festival of Women in Music, the Bass Club, Bass Fest and the Almeida Festival.

In 2000 the Cambridge Music Festival commissioned a work to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, which was performed by the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Nicholas Daniel. In November 2001 Cheryl had her first Chamber Opera, broken lines: sonata for opera premiered by the New Cambridge Opera Group, as part of the Britten@25 Festival, with generous funding from the R.V.W. Trust.