Cecilia McDowall

Born in London in 1951, Cecilia McDowall began her higher education at the University of Edinburgh before continuing at Trinity College of Music in the capital. Family responsibilities prompted an extended pause in her training, after which she returned to complete a master’s degree at London College of Music and Media. Her composition teachers included Adam Gorb, Robert Saxton, and Joseph Horovitz, and she received the Wilfred Josephs Prize. Commissions have come from James Galway, the London Mozart Players, the Kingston Brass Ensemble, and the Thames Philharmonic Choir, while the Fibonacci Sequence has performed multiple chamber pieces written expressly for the group. Additional honors include the Chappell Prize and, in 2014, the British Composer Award in the choral category.

McDowall ventured into opera for young audiences with Deep Waters, created in partnership with librettist Christie Dickason for W11 Opera. Deux-Elles released a disc of her chamber music featuring flautist Emma Williams and pianist Richard Shaw. During the 2010s her profile rose markedly in Britain, aided by the continued vitality of the country’s choral tradition. A notable achievement arrived with The Shipping Forecast (2011), whose text incorporated verbatim maritime bulletins. Ensembles that have programmed or recorded her shorter pieces include The Sixteen, which featured her on two separate 2016 releases, the BBC Singers, and the Choir of Queen’s College, Oxford, whose 2017 album A New Heaven contained her setting of I know that my Redeemer liveth. In 2017 she was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Church Music. The International Record Review credited her with “a communicative gift that is very rare in modern music.” She has held composer-in-residence posts at Oxford and at Dulwich College, London.