Deborah Pritchard

Award-winning composer Deborah Pritchard is known for her concert works, a compositional approach informed by her synaesthesia, and her work in response to visual artists.

Deborah Pritchard won a British Composer Award for her solo violin piece 'Inside Colour' in 2017. She has been broadcast by BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, released commercially by NMC, Signum and Nimbus and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Sinfonietta, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Singers, Manchester Camerata and the English String Orchestra.

As a synaesthetic composer she has worked with numerous visual artists including Maggi Hambling, Hughie O'Donoghue and Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. Her violin concerto 'Wall of Water' after the paintings by Maggi Hambling was performed at the National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing Theatre and held to critical acclaim by Gramophone as a 'work that will take ones breath away'. She also paints music and has been commissioned a series of 'music maps' for the London Sinfonietta, described in The Times as 'beautifully illustrated...paying visual homage to those wonderful medieval maps of the world.'

She studied composition with Simon Bainbridge for her MMus Degree in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and was awarded her DPhil from Worcester College, Oxford where she studied with Robert Saxton. She currently teaches composition tutorials at the University of Oxford. She was composer in residence at the Lichfield Festival, 2016 through the Sound and Music Embedded scheme and her work features in the 'Hitting the right note: Amazing Women of the Royal Academy of Music' exhibition on display at the Royal Academy of Music.

Photo credit Kayleigh Allenby