Jackie is a lecturer in Open Academy, the Academy’s Learning and Participation department.
She is a composer and percussionist, and has devised community and participation projects for many of the UK’s leading arts organisations, including Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, The Philharmonia, City of London Sinfonia and Wigmore Hall. Overseas, she co-wrote the community opera Planetaria (1997, with Sean Gregory and Nick Hayes) for Gothenburg Opera House, and was invited by the British Council to work with the Ministry of Education and Royal Army Band in Oman to develop creative and community-building music practices, contributing to a creative music strand in the music curriculum.
Jackie studied composition with Jonathan Harvey and Peter Wiegold, gaining a PhD on Role-Taking in Free Improvisation and Collaborative Composition (City University London, 1997). Her work explores the intersection between composition and improvisation. Recent commissions include Wisp - In Memoriam Jonathan Harvey (Dovecot Gallery, Aldeburgh 2022); the multisensory Miso Kitchen (Electric Medway, 2021) and Diagnosis: Drifting, Dreaming, Waiting (2020, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea). Her Game opera The Migration Game was premiered at Spitalfields Music Winter Festival (2016). As a vibraphonist, Jackie performs regularly on the London improvisation scene, and her recordings in ensembles and as a solo artist have been broadcast on Radio 3, Resonance FM and London One Radio.
Between 2008 and 2019, she led Ignite, an improvising chamber ensemble at Wigmore Hall Learning, composing and commissioning over 30 new works from composers including Jason Yarde, Joe Cutler, and Errollyn Wallen. Ignite’s work on the concert platform and in participatory workshops utilised parallel creative processes, working with young people in psychiatric care, autistic young people and people living with the effects of migration.
Current research investigates music improvisation and mental wellbeing, examining the materiality of sound, sensory environments and their efficacy in supporting wellbeing through practices such as trancing and play.
Image: Kate Garcia