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Hollie Harding

Composer

Music

Biography

Hollie is a composer, researcher and curator of contemporary music events in the UK and overseas. She is interested in looking at different ways of constructing performance scenarios and exploring the impact this has on compositional processes and the listening experience. Her piece Melting, Shifting, Liquid World is the first composition to incorporate the use of open-ear, bone-conduction headsets alongside live acoustic and amplified instruments to create a multi-layered sonic environment for the audience to move around and within. The project was awarded funding by Arts Council EnglandPRS Foundation’s Women Make MusicHinrichsen Foundation and Gemma Classical Music Trust and was the concluding piece of her Trinity Laban RDP Scholarship funded PhD in Composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She completed her PhD in 2019.

Hollie has worked with Amy Jolly, Alwynne Pritchard, Sjøforsvarets Musikkorps (Norwegian Navy Band), London Symphony Orchestra (Jerwood Composer Plus), London Philharmonic Orchestra (Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize), CHROMA ensemble, Castallian String Quartet, Ensemble Via Nova (Weimar) and DeciBells (Basel). Her work has been broadcast on Radio 3, Resonance FM and BBC4 and her latest chamber ensemble piece will be released by NMC in June 2022.

Hollie is interested in collaborating with performers, across art forms and mediums, most recently working with director Josh Ben-Tovim (Impermanence Dance) and George Monbiot on an audio visual piece exploring themes of rewilding and human loss of connection with the natural world. She also has a passion for working with amateur musicians and was 2017 Composer in Residence with CoMA, subsequently led workshops on their Summer School in Orkney and had pieces performed at their 2018 and 2020 Festivals of Contemporary Music for All.

Hollie was one of four selected composers on the Cohan Collective 2018-21 residencies working with choreographers, dancers and members of Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at Pavilion Dance South West. Teaching also plays an important role in Hollie’s artistic life and she has been Associate Head of Composition (UG) at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 2020, prior to this she was a lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (composition and professional studies) 2013-2020.

Vist Hollie’s website.