In partnership with the British Council and the PRS for Music Foundation, three British artists travelled to China in 2015 and 2016 for the Musicians in Residence programme.
Kerry Andrew, Mira Calix and Bella Hardy visited Zhengzhou, Nanjing and Kunming respectively.
Following their residencies, they joined Georgina Godwin to reflect on their experiences in China, and talk about the music they made and the local artists they collaborated with. You can listen to their discussion here:
KERRY ANDREW
Kerry Andrew is a composer, performer and writer, specialising in experimental vocal music and music theatre, choral music, folk and jazz. Her chamber operas Woodwose: A Community Chamber Opera and Dart’s Love: A Wild Swimming Chamber Opera both won their categories at the British Composer Awards in 2014. She can be found performing with the award-winning experimental vocal trio Juice, the chamber-jazz-classical-rock collective DOLLYman, prog-jazz sextet Metamorphic and as alt-folk soloist You Are Wolf. As a writer, she has featured on the Guardian online, football league blogs, BBC Radio 4′s Stories From Songwriters and is working on her first novel.
“Imagine Bjork working her magic on the English folk tradition” – Uncut
MIRA CALIX
Mira Calix is a composer and performer who integrates music, sound, visual media and technology to create multi-disciplinary installations and performance works. In 2009 she won a British Composer Award and a Royal Philharmonic Society award for her composition "My Secret Heart" and was nominated again for a British Composer Award in 2011 for her film opera Fables. She premiered her mixed media installation Inside There Falls in 2015 at the Sydney Festival, a multi-sensory large scale installation of paper, sound and movement complete with speaking walls.
“Like the Heston Blumenthal of the music world, [Calix] creates new boundaries, rather than working within old ones” – The Guardian
BELLA HARDY
Bella Hardy is a folk musician and composer from Edale, Derbyshire. She reached the final of the BBC Young Folk Award in 2004, released her debut album Night Visiting in 2007 and won BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards’ Best Original Song in 2012 for "The Herring Girl". She was named BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year in 2014 and released her latest album With the Dawn in 2015 blending confessional vocals, banjos, brass and beats.
“A shining star in the folk scene’s firmament” – fRoots
