Biography

Edinburgh-born and bred Blair studied composition from an early age, first with Kenneth Dempster and later with Eddie McGuire. It has been an ambition of Blair’s to write music for film since a young age, when he took an intensive short course in film scoring with two times Emmy award winning composer, Hummie Mann.

He studied music at Durham University before going on to pursue an MA in Composition of Music for Film and TV at Bristol University. Blair studied conducting under RSNO Associate Conductor, James Lowe, and has conducted various ensembles over the years, including the Durham University Hill Orchestra.

Blair is the co-founder of the Durham Opera Ensemble and currently Composer In Residence with the experimental theatre company, Captain Theatre. June 2007 saw the world premiere of his opera Hamlet Versus Lear, which premiered at OpFest and he has recently finished a commission for Channel 4.  He has been commissioned to write the theatre score for Jay Parini’s new play Mary Postgate, which will be premiered at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

How the Award Helped

Since the Award

Blair writes that his year at Bristol “was invaluable in allowing me to progress as a composer and taught me many specific skills in how best to synchronise my music to film.” Alongside studying composing for film, Blair conducted the student orchestra, Bristol Symphonia, set up the Bristol Film Orchestra and directed a short fiction film which was subsequently shown at a number of film festivals. Blair was awarded an MA with Distinction as well as receiving a number of other accolades, including winning the Exposures Film Festival National Composing Competition and receiving a 4Talent Nomination.

Since leaving Bristol Blair has gone on to compose for over a hundred projects for film, television and theatre. Included in those are Stephen Fry reading The Happy Prince for Sky Arts, the feature film Frequencies, episodes of BBC’s flagship science documentary Horizon, and a new ballet for The English National Ballet. As a musical arranger he has found himself working on high profile projects such Doctor Who and David’ Attenborough’s Life Story. In 2012 he was nominated for a BAFTA New Talent Award and also a Creative Scotland Award for ‘ Best New Talent in the Scottish Arts’.

For Blair’s portfolio of compositions and other work, see www.blairmowat.co.uk.

Biography

For Mexican-Italian, Alfredo Caponnetto, ‘music is my life’.

Alfredo came to Edinburgh University a year and a half ago after studying composition in Italy. Building on his Italian studies in contemporary music, he has developed an exciting synthesis of his highly-approachable tonal style and a more experimental music. His mentors at Edinburgh University say of him that his work shows the emergence of a true and distinctive compositional talent.

Alfredo is now pursuing a PhD in composition at Edinburgh University. Music commissions to emerging composers are now very rare, and a PhD is becoming the established route for composers to gain experience in their art. The focus of Alfredo’s PhD will be to create links between the Renaissance counterpoint tradition and contemporary music. He writes, “I strongly believe that the combination of the clear lines of Renaissance counterpoint with the exceptionally broad writing techniques found in contemporary music could help develop the inventive language of music in the 21st century.”

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award will support Alfredo for the three years of his PhD.

Since the Award

In November 2012, Alfredo was awarded the degree of PhD in Music Composition from Edinburgh University. During his PhD years, Alfredo co-founded both the Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble, for the promotion of contemporary music, and Europe Edition Ltd., a publisher of new works by contemporary composers. He also set up a relationship between the Santa Cecilia Conservatoire in Rome and the historically-significant St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh. His PhD supervisor says his submission is of the very highest quality which has more than fulfilled his early promise. Alfredo writes that the Dewar Arts Award allowed him to take a huge leap forward in his musical career.

Biography

Hailing from Greenock, Euan Fulton was a pupil at the Douglas Academy Music School. He went on to study music at the University of Glasgow, graduating with a good degree. Euan was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland for four years and progressed to become pianist with the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra.

Euan’s interest in composition developed during his undergraduate years and his composition for organ which was part of his degree work was one of the strongest student organ works his tutors had heard. He is considered to be one of the most able and artistically-committed of students that his tutors had had in recent years and displays the spark of originality in his work which they find exciting.

Euan has shown himself to have a highly reflective sensibility, intellectual motivation and a particular drive to compose which will enable him to become a thoughtful artist. The next step in his musical career is to pursue an MA in composition which will help him to develop his technical and artistic skills.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award will help to finance Euan as he pursues a masters in composition at the University of Glasgow.

Since the Award

Biography

Originally from Ireland, David Fennessy came to Scotland to pursue postgraduate study in composition at the RSAMD, Glasgow. He was considered to be amongst the very top group of students. David – who went to the same school as Damien Rice – learned to read music relatively late in life (15) having, up until then, played electric guitar in rock bands. David’s first contact with ‘classical’ music was when he saw a man playing classical guitar in a Dublin street. He asked him to teach him classical guitar.

David’s work has already received critical acclaim. He was shortlisted twice for the International Gaudeamus Music Prize in Amsterdam. His work has been performed in Ireland, Europe, Australia, South America and the US by a huge number of orchestras and ensembles, including the RSNO, SCO and Hebrides Ensemble. His String Quartet performed by the Endymion Ensemble will receive its London premiere in the Purcell Room, South Bank in London.

David has won a place – one of only two composers to achieve this – on the brand new Masters course run by the world-renowned International Ensemble Modern Academy, in Frankfurt. This offers him an unparalleled opportunity to work with some of the finest interpreters of new music in the world today and for his music to reach wider audiences. The experience will have a profound significance on David’s development as an artist.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award will help support David financially for his year’s study in Frankfurt.

Since the Award

David writes that “in terms of my development as an artist one of the biggest advantages of receiving the Dewar Award was the time it allowed me to focus solely on my own work without the commercial pressures and expectations of the ‘concert world’.”

Since returning to Glasgow, David has finished several commissions, completed a residency at the Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan and had his work performed in many venues. He writes that since studying in Frankfurt “my career has entered what I feel is an exciting new stage of development.”

Biography

Diana Simpson is one of the very few electroacoustic composers supported by a Dewar Arts Award.

For the uninitiated, an electroacoustic composer records sounds and transforms them using computer software to create complex sound environments. A range of resources are used to realise this music, including instruments and voices, improvisation, graphic scoring, live electronic processing on laptop and surround sound.

Hailing from Glasgow, Diana started her studies at the RSAMD, Glasgow graduating with a first in composition and going on to gain a masters with distinction. She shone as one of the best and most original composers her tutor had taught in his ten years at the RSAMD.

Several of Diana’s works have already been performed in public.  For more information and to listen to samples of Diana’s work, see www.dianasimpson.org.uk.

She has won three international prizes, the most recent being the prestigious 33rd Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music, part of the prize includes four weeks in a studio overseas and attendance at the 2007 Bourges festival.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Awards provided Diana’s PhD fees and essential equipment for her research.

Since the Award

As she works towards completing her PhD in 2009, Diana has had an eventful few years since receiving her Award. Her work has been performed internationally and she has been recognised in a number of prestigious competitions, including second prize in L’Espace du Son Concours de Spatialization Pour L’Interpretation des Ouvres Acousmatiques 2008 and winner of Prix SCRIME 2007. She has also completed composer residencies in North America and Sweden.

Diana takes up a full-time post at Kingston University, London in late 2009 where she plans to pursue her own composition and research as well as encouraging the next generation of young composers.

In April 2009 Diana was announced as the recipient of a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Manchester for ‘University Postgraduate Student of the Year’. Congratulations to Diana.