Susie is delighted to have won the Zuzana Růžičková Composition Competition 2022 and was awarded the Viktor Kalabis Prize and the Prima la Musica Prize for her composition La Conversation Enchantée et Galante. She is honoured to be the first woman to win this competition and the associated prizes. The piece has been recorded by competition founder Ada Witczyk and the musicians of Florilegium and filmed by Director Simon Helbling and published by Prima la Musica. Please see the HOME/NEWS page for clips of the recording and filming.
Susie Vaughan trained as a composer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (MMus, Lutoslawski Prize: 2nd Prize, 1996) after receiving a BMus from Royal Holloway (1st Class Hons, Edward and Florence James Prize) and a British Academy Award to undertake postgraduate research at Magdalen College, Oxford (Waynflete Prize for Composition).
Susie's research into Postmodern music very much influenced her own compositional style - an eclectic cross-over genre that draws on film, folk, circus, cabaret, jazz, musical theatre, and historical styles, idioms, harmonic language and ornamentation:
“I have a desire to re-enchant the past, to take the listener to a splintered sound world where period instruments and historical styles, idioms, harmonic language and ornamentation, are refracted through the contemporary prism of film, folk, cabaret, circus and musical theatre.”
Susie is particularly interested in setting love poetry through the ages (from Sappho to Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath) and devotional text - she was the first woman in 550 years to compose for the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford – a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis to celebrate 20 Years of Women being at the College in the Year 2000.
Other Church Music Commissions include: Ordination Music for St Andrew's Cathedral, Inverness.
Dance Music Commissions include: Ariel, a ballet, for the London Contemporary Dance School, which was awarded the Lutoslawski Prize 1996, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Theatre Music Commissions include: Reconstruction and composition of the missing third of Thomas Campion’s The Lord Hayes’ Masque performed at the Convocation House Bodleian Library and Castle Ashby for the Oxford University Early Music Society, History Alive and Sotheby's New York; incidental music for Romeo and Juliet for Creation Theatre Company; incidental music for Lady Chatterley's Lover for Benedict Productions at the Palace Theatre Manchester, Leeds Playhouse, Hull New Theatre and the Theatre Royal Brighton; Markurell at the Chelsea Theatre, Dir. Derek Martinus; incidental music and songs for the Restoration Comedy The Innocent Mistress for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Drama Department, Dir. Derek Martinus.
Concert Music Commissions include: Chamber Music for Countertenor/Alto and Lute for the Spitalfields Festival; Three Epigrams - settings of Three Epigrams by Emily Dickinson for Soprano and Piano; The Rose and the Nightingale for Soprano, Oboe Obbligato and String Quartet for the Philomel Ensemble, Magdalen College, Oxford; Women and Roses for Soprano, Oboe Obbligato and String Quartet for the Philomel Ensemble, Magdalen College, Oxford.
Over Lockdown Susie took part in the wonderful Arts Council England project Theorbo Today, for which she composed He is more than a hero, a Lament for 2 Sopranos, Lute and Theorbo:
https://www.theorbotoday.com/he-is-more-than-a-hero
In the Autumn, the Agnus Dei from her collection of pieces Sounding the PAges inspired by the British Library exhibition: Elizabeth and Mary, Royal Cousins, Rival Queens will be performed in London by the musicians of Theorbo Today:
https://www.theorbotoday.com/relatedrepertoire
