Sally Beamish facts for kids

Sally Beamish (born 26 August 1956) is a famous British composer and violist. A violist is someone who plays the viola, which is like a larger violin. Sally writes many different kinds of music. This includes music for small groups of instruments (called chamber music), for singers (vocal and choral music), and for large orchestras. She has also created music for plays, movies, and TV shows. Sally even writes music for children and for her local community.

Early Life and Musical Start

Sally Beamish was born in London, England, on August 26, 1956. When she was young, she went to the Camden School for Girls. She also played in the National Youth Orchestra. This is a special orchestra for talented young musicians.

Sally studied the viola at the Royal Northern College of Music. While there, she also took lessons in how to compose music. Her teachers included famous composers like Anthony Gilbert and Lennox Berkeley. Later, she continued her music studies in Germany.

Sally's Music Career

Sally Beamish started her career playing the viola. She was part of a group called the Raphael Ensemble. With them, she recorded several albums of music for string instruments.

But Sally became especially well-known as a composer. This happened even more after she moved from London to Scotland. She has written a lot 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!

She also writes music for smaller groups of instruments and for films and plays. She even creates music for people who play for fun, not just professionals.

Awards and Special Projects

In 1993, Sally received a special award for her amazing work in composing. She also helped lead a course for young composers in Scotland.

From 1998 to 2002, Sally 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 that helped her write a large musical piece called Knotgrass Elegy. This piece was performed at the famous BBC Proms concert series in 2001. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performed it.

More Musical Creations

Sally has written many other important works. These include three concertos for the viola and five pieces for string quartets (groups of four string instruments). She also wrote two concertos for percussion instruments. One of these was for a famous percussionist named Colin Currie.

She has also written music for traditional instruments like the clàrsach (a type of Celtic harp) and the fiddle.

In 2010, Sally was chosen for a special project called "New Music 20x12." This was part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, which celebrated arts and culture alongside the Olympic Games. For this, she wrote a new piece for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Sally's music has been recorded on the BIS label. In 2017, the Northern Ballet dance company performed her full-length ballet, The Little Mermaid. A ballet is a story told through dance and music.

Sally has been featured on BBC Radio 3's "Composer of the Week" show multiple times. In 2016, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This is a big honor in Scotland for people in science and the arts. In 2018, she won an "Award for Inspiration" at the British Composer Awards. She was also given the title Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2020 for her contributions to music.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Sally composed a piece called April. She wrote it to help support musicians who were struggling. It was also a tribute to a jazz musician who had passed away from COVID-19. This piece was included on an album with music by other famous composers.

Her piece Nine Fragments – String Quartet No. 4 was chosen as a required piece for a major international string quartet competition in 2022. She is also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Sally's Personal Life

Sally Beamish is married to Peter Thomson and lives in Brighton, UK. She is a Quaker, which is a type of Christian religious group known for its peaceful beliefs.

Some of Her Works

Sally Beamish has created a wide variety of musical pieces. Here are a few examples:

• The Lost Pibroch (1991) for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
• Winter Journey (1996) and Mary's Precious Boy (1999) are musicals for young children about the Christmas story.
• Monster (1996), an opera based on the life of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.
• The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone (1999) for saxophone and orchestra.
• River (2000), a cello concerto inspired by poems by Ted Hughes.
• Knotgrass Elegy (2001) was commissioned for the BBC Proms.
• Viola Concerto No. 2 'The Seafarer' (2001), a concerto for viola and orchestra.
• Trumpet concerto (2003) for the trumpet player Håkan Hardenberger.
• Trance o Nicht (2004), a concerto for the famous percussionist Evelyn Glennie.
• The Singing (2006), a concerto for classical accordion and orchestra.
• The Little Mermaid (2017), a full-length ballet.
• April (2020) for saxophone, vibraphone, and piano.