Freya Waley-Cohen

Freya Waley-Cohen (born 20 February 1989) is a British-American composer based in London. Biography Waley-Cohen grew up in an arts-oriented family. Her mother is the American sculptor Josie Spencer and her father is English theatre manager and producer Stephen Waley-Cohen. Her sister is the violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen. She began playing the violin at the age of three, and at aged 11 enrolled for a composition course at The Walden School, New Hampshire. She studied with Giles Swayne whilst an undergraduate at Cambridge, and then afterwards with Simon Bainbridge and Oliver Knussen at the Royal Academy of Music. In 2016 she was a Composition Fellow at the Tanglewood Festival. Music An early composition was Dark Hour, a piano quintet with clarinet, performed at the Sage Gateshead in May 2013. The choral piece Linea was written specifically for performance inside the Princess of Wales Conservatory glass house at Kew Gardens, an installation as much as a concert piece. It was performed there by the vocal ensemble Reverie in October 2014. Similarly Permutations (2017), for six recorded violins, is also site-specific. It was written to be performed inside a specially constructed building