Cecilia McDowall is fast becoming one of Britain's most popular and frequently performed composers. Her wide experience in performing, teaching and composing has enabled the formulation of a uniquely original style that speaks directly to listeners, instrumentalists and singers alike.
Born in London in 1951, she read music at Edinburgh and London University and continued her studies at Trinity College of Music in London. She studied composition with Joseph Horovitz, Robert Saxton and Adam Gorb and has won several major composition awards.
She has received many commissions which include those from London Musici, London Mozart Players, Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts, the trumpeter, Paul Archibald, flautist, Susan Milan, Fibonacci Sequence and Ensemble Lumière.
Her music has been widely performed throughout the United Kingdom and abroad, and at a variety of festivals including Deal, Presteigne, Hampstead and Highgate, Music Past and Present and at Dartington International Summer School. Her works are regularly broadcast on BBC Radio and Television.
She has written a number of works for brass, including a trumpet concerto, Seraphim, a trumpet and piano duo, The Night Trumpeter and a brass dectet, Salon Argentina.
Premières in 2004 have included Dancing Fish for saxophonist Sarah Field and the Brontë String Quartet, a string quartet, The case of the unanswered wire, for the Sorrel Quartet at the Presteigne Festival and a chorus and orchestra setting of the Stabat Mater for the St Albans Choral Society. A CD of her choral music was released in October, 2004, on the Dutton Epoch label.
