St Swithun’s pupil wins young composers’ award

St Swithun’s sixth form student Pernille Faye, has won a coveted music award for the second successive year. The prize, a place on the Martin Read Foundation’s 2020 Young Composers’ Scheme, gives the 17 year old access to composer mentoring and workshops. The award also includes a commission to create a four-minute piece for solo percussion which will be performed publicly at the Royal College of Music in London this April by percussionist-in-residence and RCM undergraduate Patricks Skabadis.

Pernille is already an accomplished musician and composer, having written pieces for flute and vibraphone, for clarinet and piano and an innovation using live recordings with GarageBand Digital Input among other music. She plays the clarinet and bass clarinet. She was selected for the Martin Read award after impressing the panel with her bass clarinet composition Order and Chaos.

Having also been awarded a commission in 2019, Pernille has an established relationship with the Martin Read Foundation. She says ‘I learnt so much last year and definitely felt that the ante needed to be upped for this year’s application. I am so pleased to have been selected and to have this brilliant opportunity to work with a professional composer’. Her mentor this year will be Macedonian/French composer Pande Shahov.

The Martin Read Foundation’s Young Composers’ Scheme provides support for aspiring young composers through commissioning, tuition, workshops and recording opportunities. It was founded in 2014 in memory of the Hampshire-based composer and educator Martin Read, who died suddenly in 2012. The Foundation is a platform to promote Martin’s passion: teaching musical composition to young people.