Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Eleanor Alberga is a highly regarded mainstream British composer with commissions from the BBC Proms and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. With a substantial output ranging from solo instrumental works to full-scale symphonic works and operas, her music is performed all over the world.
In 2015 her commissioned work Arise, Athena! for the opening of the Last Night of the BBC Proms was seen and heard by millions, and cemented a reputation as a composer of huge originality and consummate skill. At different times, Alberga was a member of the African Dance Company Fontomfrom, and played guitar and sang with the Jamaican Folk Singers. She was part of the duo Double Exposure with her husband the violinist Thomas Bowes, and more recently they have together founded and nurtured Arcadia, an original festival in the English countryside where they live.
Alberga has gathered a number of awards, most notably a NESTA fellowship in 2000 and a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2019. In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2021, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to British Music.
Isata Kanneh-Mason appears courtesy of Decca Classics.