Claire Victoria Roberts: The Composers’ Fund
Claire is a violinist, vocalist and composer, whose work spans a wide range of activity from singing at swing festivals to writing contemporary orchestral works. The Composer Fund will provide support towards an album of songs and interludes, featuring collaborators from classical, folk and jazz fields. There will be a mix of lushly-scored contemporary string music, repeated rhythmic grooves and improvised music. The project is a chance for Claire to bring the different strands of her musicianship together: writing, performing, improvising and connecting different styles of music through adventurous compositions.
Described as ‘one of Wales’s leading composers’ by Wales Arts Review, Claire Victoria Roberts’s music has been performed by BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Psappha Ensemble, cellist Oliver Coates, Opra Cymru, Uproar Ensemble, trumpeter Simon Desbruslais, Camden Symphony Orchestra, The Carice Singers and harpist Anne Denholm. Claire is the Winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize 2019-2020, 2017 winner of the Mathias Composition prize, and 2019 winner of a Francis Chagrin award. She has been broadcast on Radio 3, Radio Wales and Radio Cymru.
Born in Wales, Claire began singing taking lessons and competing on the Eisteddfod stages. Her dad, a gypsy jazz violinist, gave her a taste for swing. After graduating from Oxford with a choral scholarship, she cut her teeth touring with the Swing Commanders around the UK and Europe, singing and fiddling on 1940s Western Swing. Claire soon began to make a name for herself as a versatile vocalist performing jazz, swing, bossa, folk and chanson.