L A U R A   S H I P S E Y

Laura Shipsey is a composer and music editor based in Hertfordshire, UK.  As a composer her work is concerned with meeting points, collision, and transformation. Particularly between the imaginary and the abstract, reality and dreams, innermost detail and outermost form.

Within her growing catalogue of concert music, large scale works include: The Time Being,  for sinfonietta, and Crossing Songs for soprano and chamber orchestra, commissioned by Britten Pears Arts for the Aldeburgh Festival in 2022. Taking that orchestral voice and  into brass, Of Far Flung Skies was written for the City of Bristol Brass Band and Learner Band in 2020 and premiered in St George's Hall Bristol in 2022, later broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Laura's first String Quartet was completed in 2023  - the final movements developed with and performed by the Bozzini Quartet at Time of Music Festival, Finland. Later that year Laura wrote her first work for choir O Nacht, setting text by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. In all these works there are throughlines: a dramatic flair, prioritisation of story and line, and a miniaturist-like attentiveness to detail and character.

At the smaller scale, Laura's music lives through the same multidimensional approach; carefully woven characters - often conflicting - in vibrant conversation within one instrument, just as if it were a wider ensemble.  Most recently, her clarinet solo Three Wandering Lines was recorded by clarinettist Emily Wilson at the RNCM, taking three fragments and transforming them into something with a voice and logic of its own. Other solo works include Stormfield Songs for violin, Lattice Study for harp, Beam for woodblock, Wolf for solo percussionist, and Tree Pieces, Chameleon, and Feathered Air for solo piano. Returning to the theme of translation, Feathered Air, written as part of Psappha's composing for... scheme, began as a work for hardanger fiddle and approaches the piano through that very resonant and internally magnetic lens.

Laura's work as a composer is rooted in early experiences as a violinist and an ongoing informal practice of improvisation and experimentation with form, material and performance. Laura was a co-founder of the Wales based Hooting Cow Collective in 2017 - a group with whom she led new music workshops, performances and weekly work-in-progress and improvisation sessions. This practice as an improviser is clear in a range of improvised and alternatively scored works: TRAX for improvisers is the earliest example, later In Tiled - an installation piece for improvisers in a crowd took that same visual language into a larger space. Points, Clicks and Whistles for any number of vocalists is rooted in this same understanding of logic, form, humour, and game play.

As a researcher and educator Laura is an Associate Fellow of Advance HE, and taught as a postgraduate tutor in composition and performance whilst completing her PhD under the supervision of Arlene Sierra and David Beard at Cardiff University. Laura first studied composition with Eric Egan and Sam Hayden at Durham University (2010-13), and since then has benefited from working with a wide range of performers, composers, conductors and teachers including: Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Colin Matthews, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Simon Løffler, Clare Salaman, Jessica Cottis, Jonathan Berman, Rob Fokkens, Pedro Faria Gomes, and Peter Wiegold.

Alongside her practice as a composer, Laura is an experienced music editor and has worked on scores by composers including: Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, Tom Coult, Tansy Davies, Jonny Greenwood, Imogen Holst, Lisa Illean, Oliver Leith, Colin Matthews, Alex Paxton, Arlene Sierra, Martin Suckling, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and John Woolrich.

Laura currently works as an editor for the publishing house Faber Music.