Erica MacLeod is a London based composer, who uses walls of sound and colourful gestures with an array of instruments and digital media. Erica is a multiplatform composer, working frequently with dancers and film makers to create a more immersive and inclusive art form. Her work in this field has led to her being part of the dance film collective Figure+Phrase , who aim to create groundbreaking and compelling new works. She was the recipient of the Trinity Laban Silver Medal for Composition in 2016/17 and 2017/18.

 

Erica has been involved in music her whole life, having been a chorister at the church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Uppingham, Rutland, and learning piano and flute from a young age. Her love of music began to blossom at Stamford Endowed Schools, where she began to compose and play more seriously, winning awards for 'Most Promising Young

Performer', and the audience voted Music Festival winner (2012) for her performance of Khachaturian's Tocatta. She was also a scholarship holder, and winner of the Rachel Yates

award for Music.

​

She began professional training in 2013 at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where she studied composition with John Ashton Thomas, Stephen Montague and conducting with Gregory Rose and Alex Walker.

Her training at Trinity Laban has opened her up to a new world of music, and 'fine art'

composition. In 2014, Erica was commissioned by Trinity Laban Sinfonia to write her first orchestral piece, conducted by Jonathan Tilbrooke, and has since written further pieces for chamber and symphony orchestra. She particularly enjoys the challenge of finding new colours through orchestration, and is excited by the idea of combining digital composition with acoustic and orchestral writing.

In 2016 she was again commissioned by the Trinity Laban Sinfonia to write a new piece for wind orchestra to be conducted by Andrew Dunn and performed in December of 2016.

​

Erica was invited in 2016 to write for Roderick Williams and the Coull Quartet as part of the MCS Oxford Art Festival, and worked with poet Sophie Finch to create the original piece.

She was also asked to represent Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance's

Composition Department at the Leeds Lieder Festival's Composers and Poets Forum.

​

In the first half of 2017, Erica had premieres of her pieces Resurgence (by Kingfisher

Chorale), The Buried Moon (for solo piano by Lucy Rose Murphy), The Golden Bird (for solo

violin by Olivia Holland) and Caelum (by Reed and Ivory). These premieres took place in

Leicestershire, London and the north of England.

​

In August 2017, Erica moved to the USA and began study for a Master of Music in Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is in the studio of Grammy nominated composer Mason Bates. In her first year she wrote works for chamber ensemble with soprano, mezzo soprano and contralto (Leaves of Grass), a set of three choral works (Sinnsear), and a song cycle for soprano (Varying Degrees of Madness), as well as beginning work on wind orchestra and symphony orchestra pieces.

​

She finds inspiration in the works of Pierre Boulez, James MacMillan, Arvo Part and

Helmut Lachenmann, and is interested in their harmonic approaches to music.