Sally Beamish facts for kids

Sarah Frances Beamish, also known as Sally Beamish, is a talented British composer and a musician who plays the viola. She was born on August 26, 1956. Sally Beamish writes many different kinds of music. This includes music for small groups of instruments (chamber music), voices (vocal and choral), and large groups of instruments (orchestral music). She has also created music for plays, movies, and TV shows. What's really cool is that she also writes music especially for children and for people in her local community!

Early Life and Musical Training

Sally Beamish was born in London, England. From a young age, she showed a great interest in music. She went to Camden School for Girls and played the viola in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. This is a special orchestra for young, talented musicians.

She continued her music studies at the Royal Northern College of Music. There, she learned how to compose music from famous composers like Anthony Gilbert and Lennox Berkeley. Later, she traveled to Germany to study the viola even more with an Italian violist named Bruno Giuranna.

A Career in Composing

Sally Beamish started her career as a violist in a group called the Raphael Ensemble. They recorded several albums of music for string sextets (groups of six string instruments). However, she became most famous for her amazing compositions, especially after she moved from London to Scotland.

She has written a huge amount of music for orchestras. This includes two symphonies and many concertos. A concerto is a piece of music where one instrument plays a solo part with an orchestra. Sally has written concertos for instruments like the violin, viola, cello, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, percussion, flute, and even the accordion!

Sally Beamish also writes music for smaller groups of instruments (chamber music), and music for films and plays. She even creates music for people who play music just for fun, not as professionals.

Awards and Special Projects

In September 1993, Sally Beamish received a special award called the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for her amazing work in composing. She also helped teach young composers at a course in Scotland.

From 1998 to 2002, she was a "composer in residence" for two orchestras: the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO). This meant she worked closely with them and wrote four big pieces of music for them.

Sally won another award, the 'Creative Scotland' Award, which helped her write a large musical piece called an oratorio. This oratorio, called The Knotgrass Elegy, was performed at the famous BBC Proms in 2001 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

More Notable Works

Sally Beamish has composed many other important pieces. These include three concertos for the viola and five string quartets (music for four string instruments). She also wrote two concertos for percussion, one of which was first performed in 2012.

She has even written music for traditional instruments like the clàrsach and the fiddle. In 2010, she was chosen to be one of twenty composers for a project called "New Music 20x12." This project was part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, which celebrated arts and culture around the Olympic Games. For this, she composed a new work for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Her music has been recorded on the BIS label, so people all over the world can listen to her compositions.

In December 2017, a ballet based on The Little Mermaid premiered. Sally Beamish wrote all the orchestral music for this full-length ballet.

She has been featured twice on BBC Radio 3's Composer of the Week show, in 2012 and 2015. In 2016, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which is Scotland's national academy for science and arts. She also received the 'Award for Inspiration' at the 2018 British Composer Awards. In 2020, she was honored with the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her contributions to music.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Sally Beamish composed a piece called April. This music was part of a project to help musicians who were struggling during that time. It was written in memory of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis Jr. who had passed away from Covid.

Her piece Nine Fragments – String Quartet No. 4 was chosen as a required piece for the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in 2022. She is also a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Personal Life

Sally Beamish has two sons and a daughter. She married Robert Irvine in 1988, and they separated in 2008. In 2019, she married Peter Thomson. Since 2018, she has lived in Brighton, UK. She is also a member of the Quaker faith.

Selected Musical Works

Sally Beamish has written many different kinds of musical pieces. Here are some of them:

• The Lost Pibroch (1991) for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
• Viola Concerto No 1 (1995), which was first performed at the BBC Proms.
• Winter Journey (1996) and Mary's Precious Boy (1999) are musicals about the Nativity story, made for young children.
• Monster (1996), an opera based on the life of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.
• Black, White and Blue (1997) for harpsichord and string quartet.
• Caledonian Road (1997), commissioned by the Glasgow Chamber Orchestra.
• The Day Dawn (1997), for amateur musicians.
• No I'm Not Afraid (1998).
• Awuya (1998) for harp.
• Four Findrinny Songs (1998).
• Sun and Moon (1999), a dance project for pre-school children.
• The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone (1999) for saxophone and chamber orchestra.
• River (2000), a cello concerto inspired by poems by Ted Hughes.
• Knotgrass Elegy (2001), commissioned by the BBC Proms.
• The Naming of Birds (2001), for a wind quintet.
• Viola Concerto No. 2 'The Seafarer' (2001), first performed by Tabea Zimmermann.
• Trumpet concerto (2003) for Håkan Hardenberger and the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland.
• Trance o Nicht (2004), a concerto for percussionist Evelyn Glennie.
• Flute concerto (2005), premiered by Sharon Bezaly.
• Shenachie (2006), a stage musical about the Scottish Highlands.
• Under the Wing of the Rock (2006), a viola concerto.
• St. Catharine's Service (2006), music for a choir.
• The Singing (2006), a concerto for classical accordion and orchestra.
• The Lion & the Deer (2007), a cycle of poems from the 14th century.
• Suite pour Violoncelle et Orchestre (2007), for Steven Isserlis and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
• A Cage of Doves (2007), for the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra.
• Four Songs from Hafez (2007) for tenor and piano or harp.
• Spinal Chords (2012).
• The King's Alchemist (2013) for string trio.
• Equal Voices (2014) for orchestra, chorus, soprano, and baritone.
• Intrada e Fuga (2015) for solo violin.
• The Little Mermaid (2017), a ballet.
• Variation in Pictured Within (2019), a piece with variations by 14 composers.
• April (2020) for alto saxophone, vibraphone, and piano.
• Sonnets (2020) for two pianos.
• Trance (2023) for piano trio.