Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian


Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian is a British composer, singer, and harper. She is considered one of today's leading emerging composers.

Biography

Born in Suffolk, England and of British/Armenian descent, she trained in composition at Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama, before gaining a first in Music from Girton College, Cambridge, where she was awarded the Rima Alamuddin Composition Prize in 2004, the Turle Scholarship for Music in 2006, and the Gamble Prize for Research in 2006. She held a scholarship at Trinity College Of Music in London in 2006–07.

Career

Horrocks-Hopayian began working with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2010–11, as a participant in their Panufnik Scheme.
She wrote for the London Symphony Orchestra Community Choir in 2017. The London Symphony Orchestra also commissioned her to arrange a traditional Gamelan piece, 'Ngedas Lemah', for première at the Barbican Centre with the London Symphony Orchestra Community Gamelan and London Symphony Orchestra Strings.
She is a London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub Associate and has broadcast for their show on Resonance FM.

Residencies

She became Visiting Fellow Commoner at Girton College in 2020.
She was inaugural composer-in-residence for the London Symphony Orchestra at Khadambi Asalache's House, 575 Wandsworth Road from 2015 to 2017.
Horrocks-Hopayian's work has a strong visual and tactile element, which she calls "Eye Music", structuring rather than simply decorating her music.
Horrocks-Hopayian was composer-in-residence at Handel House Museum from 2012 to 2014. In February 2016, she launched Handel House Museum's opening of Jimi Hendrix's flat to the public by performing original material in collaboration with Jessica Hynes, bassist Calum Gourlay, guitarist Christopher Montague and artist Maya Ramsay.

Awards

awarded her their Artistic Director Project: 'Bhangra Latina', in 2007.
An Arts Council England Award enabled her to record her first album, 'Big Ears', which was inspired by her experience of partial deafness. She won another Arts Council England Award for her oratorio, The Evolution of Eve.
In 2013 she gained a PRS award for Consortium5's commission L'envoi, commemorating the death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison.
The Evolution of Eve was developed in 2013 with Sveriges Radio into a broadcast, 'DJ Helga', aimed at young people,. It reached the last five at the international Prix Marulić, hosted by Croatian Radiotelevision in 2015.
In 2015, Horrocks-Hopayian was commissioned to write ‘Ser Սեր ’ for the London Jazz Festival, performed by herself alongside guitarist Christopher Montague. She developed the piece for SATB choir in 2017, which won a BASCA call for works by BAME composers. It was premièred by the BBC Singers, and recorded for BBC Radio 3.
Trish Clowes commissioned Horrocks-Hopayian to write 'Muted Lines' for her project "My Iris" in 2016.
"Muted Lines" won the BASCA British Composer Award in 2017.
In 2018, Melodia Women's Choir of New York City commissioned Red Bird for its Women Composers' Commissioning Award, with world premiere performances in New York City.

Nominations

She was finalist for two BASCA British Composer Awards in 2017: "Muted Lines" was nominated for the Jazz Composition category, and "Khadambi's House" was nominated for the Chamber Ensemble category.
She was finalist, with Hugh Jones, as Crewdson, in the BASCA British Composer Awards in 2018 in the Sonic Art category for "Two Machines". This featured a new musical instrument developed by Horrocks-Hopayian and Crewdson, called the 'sonic bonnet', through which she can trigger sounds. Cevanne was featured in the New Music event at the BBC Proms 2019 with the Sonic Bonnet and her harp.

Selected works

Chamber ensemble

As writer/producer and performer