Anna Braithwaite – Composer

Anna Braithwaite is a composer and performer living and working in Folkestone. Since 2011, she has been honing a technique of writing music to accompany interview-derived verbatim text, which she used to create ’Look Up Doncaster’ for Doncaster’s ‘Quirky Choir’ (as part of the ‘Adopt a Composer’ scheme supported by Sound and Music, PRSF, Making Music and as heard on BBC Radio 3).

In 2016, she won a place on the Sound And Music ‘Composer-Curator’ scheme, for which she wrote ‘Eastbrooke’s Adaptation’, a piece of verbatim music theatre that toured the UK and featured on Resonance FM. She was invited into the British Music Collection and was also composer-in-residence at Folkestone Quarterhouse. During her residency Anna developed an ensemble piece with director Emma Bernard and seven actor/musicians, exploring the different ways in which peoples’ brains work, called ‘Brainsong’, which premiered at ‘Normal? Festival of the Brain’.

In 2017, Anna undertook a research project with Dr. Labadi of University of Kent to assess the social impact of regeneration on Folkestone. She combined Labadi’s sociological analysis with music inspired by it to create an innovative ‘gig lecture’ called ‘Fanfare For a Seaside Town’ and presented it as part of the Folkestone Triennial.

Anna founded the Montrose Composers Club (MCC) in 2015 with four local composers. They have written and performed concerts of new works as part of Folkestone Fringe’s yearly ‘Profound Sound’ festival since its inception and for experimental music night ‘Free Range’ (Canterbury). Her MCC piece ‘Chinese Whispers’ was included on an LP of experimental music curated by Migro Records. The Montrose Composers’ Club wrote a series of new works for the Sacconi Quartet which they premiered at Customs House as part of the Sacconi Festival fringe in 2019. Anna’s piece ‘Washing Machine Head’ utilised fragments of verbatim text taken from an interview with an alcoholic in recovery. She performed it using a looper pedal over an accompanying soundscape written for string quartet, wine glasses and chorus.

Since moving to Folkestone in 2014, Anna has been leading family workshops for the Creative Foundation in music-making, composition and creating graphic scores. She has enjoyed facilitating sessions for older women in how to create their own DIY punk band, for women-only improvisation groups and for neuro-diverse young people in creating animation soundtracks.

In 2019, Anna spent six months as composer-in-residence at Chatham Historic Dockyard producing two films with collaborator Matt Rowe. 2020 has seen her perform in: ‘Fag Break’, an improvised piece conceptualised by Rebecca Askew, ‘In The Loop’, with collaborators Helen Lindon (artist) and Luke Birch (dancer) and ‘Persephone’s Dream’, an opera she co-wrote and performed in during lockdown for Fat Lady Opera. She also created a binaural sound work called ‘Somnambulist’, which featured at the ‘Electric Medway’ festival and on Radiophrenia.

Anna enjoys performing with improvisors Gemma Storr and Sylvia Hallett as ‘Free Women’ and with the thirty-strong ‘Free Range Orchestra’.