Biography
British composer Freya Waley-Cohen has drawn an expanding stream of commissions from chamber ensembles and, with growing frequency, orchestras across Britain and farther afield. Her website describes the music as “characterised by contrasts between earthy rhythmic play and fragility, luminous spaces, and a sense of the otherworldly.” She also helped establish the Listenpony concert series, which supported dozens of new pieces, and she later served as its artistic director. Several of her scores have been committed to disc, among them the song cycle Spell Book (2020), released on the NMC label in 2024.
Waley-Cohen entered the world on February 20, 1989. Her father, theater producer Stephen Waley-Cohen, and her mother, American artist Josie Spencer, raised her alongside violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen, her sister. She began violin lessons at age three, yet already displayed an aptitude for composition during childhood; at eleven she enrolled in courses at the Walden School summer music camp in Dublin, New Hampshire. At Cambridge University she pursued conducting studies with Giles Swayne. She continued at the Royal Academy of Music, where her teachers included Simon Bainbridge and, in one of his final teaching relationships before his death in 2018, Oliver Knussen.
In 2012 she co-founded Listenpony; the organization ultimately commissioned roughly fifty works before it ceased operations in 2022. While still a student she began to receive notice, and her quintet Dark Hour reached the stage of the Sage Gateshead concert hall (now The Glasshouse) in 2013. Several early pieces were conceived for particular locations, among them Permutations for six violins (2017), written for a newly completed building at the Aldeburgh Festival. By the close of the decade major ensembles were requesting scores; the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, led by composer John Adams, introduced her orchestral work Changeling in 2019.
During the 2019–2020 season she held the post of Associate Composer at Wigmore Hall in London, followed by a composer-in-residence appointment with the London Chamber Orchestra for 2021–2022. Her calendar grew steadily fuller through the 2020s. The one-hour opera WITCH received its first performance at the Royal Academy of Music in 2022, and the orchestral score Demon—jointly commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra—premiered at Birmingham Symphony Hall in 2023. As of 2024, upcoming events included the premiere of Mother Tongue by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner and the first outing of the song cycle The Moon, the Moss & the Mushrooms, scheduled for baritone Roderick Williams. By the middle of the decade more than half a dozen of her compositions had appeared on record, among them the 2020 cycle Spell Book, issued in 2024.
Waley-Cohen entered the world on February 20, 1989. Her father, theater producer Stephen Waley-Cohen, and her mother, American artist Josie Spencer, raised her alongside violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen, her sister. She began violin lessons at age three, yet already displayed an aptitude for composition during childhood; at eleven she enrolled in courses at the Walden School summer music camp in Dublin, New Hampshire. At Cambridge University she pursued conducting studies with Giles Swayne. She continued at the Royal Academy of Music, where her teachers included Simon Bainbridge and, in one of his final teaching relationships before his death in 2018, Oliver Knussen.
In 2012 she co-founded Listenpony; the organization ultimately commissioned roughly fifty works before it ceased operations in 2022. While still a student she began to receive notice, and her quintet Dark Hour reached the stage of the Sage Gateshead concert hall (now The Glasshouse) in 2013. Several early pieces were conceived for particular locations, among them Permutations for six violins (2017), written for a newly completed building at the Aldeburgh Festival. By the close of the decade major ensembles were requesting scores; the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, led by composer John Adams, introduced her orchestral work Changeling in 2019.
During the 2019–2020 season she held the post of Associate Composer at Wigmore Hall in London, followed by a composer-in-residence appointment with the London Chamber Orchestra for 2021–2022. Her calendar grew steadily fuller through the 2020s. The one-hour opera WITCH received its first performance at the Royal Academy of Music in 2022, and the orchestral score Demon—jointly commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra—premiered at Birmingham Symphony Hall in 2023. As of 2024, upcoming events included the premiere of Mother Tongue by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner and the first outing of the song cycle The Moon, the Moss & the Mushrooms, scheduled for baritone Roderick Williams. By the middle of the decade more than half a dozen of her compositions had appeared on record, among them the 2020 cycle Spell Book, issued in 2024.
Albums
Singles
