Aurora Orchestra: The Open Fund for Organisations
Aurora Orchestra commission – Héloïse Werner
Héloïse Werner will write a new commission for Aurora Orchestra to be premiered in London in March 2023. Celebrated for her adventurous and distinctive approach to music-making, Werner is widely recognised as a rising figure on the contemporary music scene and was named as one of BBC Radio 3’s 31 under 31 Young Stars 2020. Her debut album PHRASES was released in June 2022; it is one of Gramophone Editor’s Choices July 2022 and described by Apple Music as “a staggering debut”.
Werner writes: “I am very excited to be writing a new work for Aurora Orchestra – I’ve always been inspired by their thrilling and innovative approaches to music making. Having mostly focused on solo and chamber music to date, I’m at the stage of my composition career where I want to write for larger forces and this commission is arriving at just the right time. For the past year, I have been thinking that I would love to write an orchestral piece which would involve players not only using their instruments, but also their voices – whether speaking or singing voices. There is something so powerful about seeing and hearing a whole orchestra using their voices. As a French person living in the UK, I am very interested in exploring the relationship between language, memory and performance in my music. I think doing this on an orchestral scale would be so exciting and Aurora Orchestra is the perfect ensemble for this.”