SARAH ANGLISS
composer | performer | sound designer
Curriculum Vitae
Skills
COMPOSER
Composing for film, theatre and the live music stage. Sarah's work seamlessly blends live electronics and extemporisation with classically notated vocal and instrumental scores.
LIVE MUSICIAN
Performing own compositions live at festivals and venues.
SOUND DESIGNER
Sound design for theatre, galleries, radio shows, podcasts and historic sites.
ARRANGER
Finding beautiful and playful arrangements and reductions of everything from pop songs to orchestral scores.
MD
Steering ensembles and performers of all musical abilities - includes teaching complex songs to actors.
RESEARCHER
Researching the history of sound culture through archives, instrumental reconstruction and more. Presenting research in radio documentaries, book chapters, magazines aricles and salon talks.
World renowned research into the ostensibly haunting psychological effects of infrasound.
INSTRUMENTAL SKILLS INCLUDE
Theremin - classical playing and bespoke augmented techniques
Recorders - including 20th and 21st century augmented techniques.
Keyboard - piano, clavisimbalum, portative organ.
Folk and renaissance woodwind - including tin whistle, crumhorn and rackett.
Musical saw - as recently featured in a Chaplin documentary soundscape
Violin (second study - used sparingly!)
TECH SKILLS INCLUDE
Sound editing in Logic, Protools, Ableton live
Programming in Max MSP - advanced techniques, including development of bespoke externals and plugins
Score notation and engraving in Dorico and Sibelius
QLAb programming for theatre - including advanced techniques
Working with 21st century spectral techniques, using FFT analysis, evolutionary search algorithms and more
Acoustic calculations, predictions and analysis - e.g. estimating reverb characteristics and eigenvalues of room
Understanding wavefield synthesis systems and other emerging acoustic tech, from mathematical first principles
Robotics - including the design and build of robotic musical instruments.
Programming generative and evolutionary music machines; incorporating machine-learning algorithms
Programming, designing and building with Arduino, RPi and other physical computing platforms
Electronics, soldering and basic circuit design
Object-oriented programming in C, Javascript, Python and related codes
3D printing - with access to machines in a shared workshop
Projects
FILM INCLUDES
Amulet - film score for UK feature film, written and directed by Romola Garai. Premiered at Sundance 2020. Genre: horror.
The Fall of The House of Usher - live score for Watson and Webber's classic horror from 1928, at NFT1 of the BFI. For their season 'Gothic - The Dark Heart of Film'
OPERA INCLUDES
Giant - composer and project instigator. World premiere opened Aldeburgh Festival June 2023. Librettist Ross Sutherland (dir. Sarah Fahie).
Alcina (Handel) - sound designer, making an elaborate bespoke effect for the climax of the show. Royal Opera House (dir. Richard Jones)
THEATRE INCLUDES
The Hairy Ape (dir. Richard Jones) - at The Old Vic, London, and Park Avenue Armory, New York
The Twilight Zone (dir. Richard Jones) - at Almeida, and West End, London
Once in a Lifetime (dir. Richard Jones) - at The Young Vic
Tech R&D for new theatre show exploring women's voices, trustworthiness and AI. Included exploring Markov chains and voice cloning to create AI testimony. For The Royal Shakespeare Company Digital R&D. Director and research lead Kirsty Housley.
The Effect (dir. Rupert Goold) - at The National Theatre
Horlicks and Armageddon - Brighton International Festival and Fringe award winner. Writer and performer (dir. Emma Kilbey)
RADIO DOCUMENTARY INCLUDES
The Bird Fancyer's Delight - on the strange 18th century practice of teaching songbirds to 'record' human tunes. Researcher and presenter. Produced by Neil McCarthy, BBC Radio 4.
Echo in a Bottle - on our enduring and sometimes deathly cultural fascination with the echo, BBC Radio 4. Researcher and presenter. Produced by Peregrine Andrews for Farshoreline.
Knock Knock - the History of Sound Effects. For Archive Hour on BBC Radio 4. Presenter and co-researcher. Producers Michael Umney and Ed Baxter, Resonance FM.
Hildegard of Bingen - a podcast for Camden Arts Centre created early in Covid lockdown. Produced by Alannah Chance.
WRITING INCLUDES
A short biography of inventor and BBC Radiophonic Co-Founder Daphne Oram, as the forward a reprint of Oram's treatise 'An Individual Note'.
Comparing musicians' early atittudes to film sound, drum machines and samplers. A chapter for Material Culture and Electronic Sound, for the Science Museum and Smithsonian Scholarly Press.
An essay on ventriloquism, performance and the recording age for The Wire Magazine.
Reflections on The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the famous Doomsday Clock, for The Wire Magazine.
A short biography of Muriel Howorth, founder of the amateur UK Atomic Gardening Society. For The Odditorium (ed. Bramwell and Keeling, Hodder and Stoughton).
Wall text for The Making the Modern World exhibition at The Science Museum.
AWARDS AND GRANTS
Ivor Novello Award 2021
Category: Visionary Award
PRS for Music Foundation Composer's Award
for creation of Buying the Wind 2019
Composer's Award
from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation 2018
Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship for development of Giant, 2016
- PHOTO LUCY CAGE
Festivals and venues
Aldeburgh Festival
Almeida Theatre, London
Ambassadors Theatre, London
Arnolfini, Bristol
Arthur Ross Gallery, Philadelphia
BBC Halls Swansea
BFI Southbank, London
Bom-Bane’s, Brighton
Bring to Light, Birmingham
The British Library, London
Cafe Oto, London
Cambridge Junction
Camden Arts Centre, London
Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow
Compton Verney
The Cube, Bristol
Duke of Yorks Picturehouse, Brighton
Elektriteater, Tartu
Fort Process, Newhaven
Glad Cafe, Glasgow
Golden Lion, Todmorden
Handel House Museum, London
HMS Alliance (submarine museum), Gosport
Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Colebrookdale
Kings Place, London
Latitude Festival, Beccles
LSO St Luke’s, London
Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
The National Theatre, London
National Sawdust, Brooklyn
Minerva Works, Birmingham
Museum of London
The Old Vic, London
Off the Page (The Wire and Nymusik)
Park Avenue Armory, New York
Purcell Room, London
Radiophrenia, Glasgow
Raven Row, London
Royal Festival Hall, London
The Royal Institution, London
Royal Opera House
Science Museum, London
Site Gallery, Sheffield
Snape Maltings
Somerset House
Sonic Imperfections, London
Spike Island, Bristol
Spirit of Gravity, Brighton
Star and Shadow, Newcastle
Supersonic Festival, Birmingham
Supernormal Festival, Braziers Park
Union Chapel, London
Unsound, Kraków
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
The Young Vic, London
