Cheryl Frances-Hoad was born in Essex in 1980 and received her musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Gonville and Caius College (University of Cambridge) and Kings College London. She currently divides her time between Cambridge and Leeds, where she is the first DARE Cultural Fellow in the Opera Related Arts in association with Opera North and the University of Leeds. Cheryl won the BBC Young Composer Competition in 1996 at the age of 15 and since then her works have garnered numerous prizes and awards, including the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize (UK, 2007), the Sun River Composition Prize (China, 2007), The International String Orchestra Composition Competition (Malta, 2006), The Bliss Prize (UK, 2002), the first Robert Helps International Composition Prize (University of Florida, 2005), the Mendelssohn Scholarship (UK, 2002) and the Cambridge Composer's Competition (UK, 2001). In 2010 Cheryl became the youngest composer to win two awards in the same year at the BASCA British Composer Awards (her setting of Psalm 1 won the Choral category, and Stolen Rhythm for solo piano won the Solo or Duo category). Many of her works have been generously supported by the RVW Trust, the Britten Pears Foundation, the PRS for Music Foundation, the Nicholas Boas CharitableTrust and the Bliss Trust.
In 2008 Cheryl was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Artists in Residence Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, enabling her to investigate aspects of the mind at the Psychiatry Department, which resulted in a new work for piano premiered at the 2009 Cambridge Clinical Neuroscience and Mental Health Symposium. Also In 2008, Cheryl was awarded the Wicklow County Council Per Cent for Arts Commission (Ireland), which enabled her to compose her first piano concerto, premiered by Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra in May 2009.
Cheryl's work has been premiered in some of the world's most important chamber music venues, including the Wigmore Hall (Melancholia (piano trio), Excelsus (solo 'cello) and My fleeting Angel (piano trio)) and the Purcell Room (The Glory Tree (for soprano and six instruments), and The Ogre Lover (for string trio)). Her debut CD of chamber works, The Glory Tree, was released in 2011 by Champs Hill records and received excellent reviews in The Times, Telegraph and Guardian, and was chosen as "Chamber Music Choice" by BBC Music Magazine in October 2011. Her second CD, of vocal works, is due for release in July 2012.
Future works include an Olympic-inspired work for the Lawson Trio and Chamber Music 2000 (to be premiered at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, early 2012), a song cycle inspired by Darwin's legacy (to be premiered in Leeds, 2012), a new Canticle to be premiered by the Prince Consort to be premiered on the exact centenary of Britten's birth (at the Wigmore Hall, 22nd November 2013) and a new opera, Amy's Last Dive, with a libretto by Adam Strickson, to be premiered as part of the Yorkshire Cultural Olympiad programme in July 2012 in Bridlington and Leeds.
Please click here for Cheryl's full C.V., worklist and reviews.
email: cheryl at cherylfranceshoad dot co dot uk