Nicola LeFanu
Nicola Frances LeFanu is a British composer, academic, lecturer and director.
Life
Nicola LeFanu was born in Wickham Bishops, Essex, England, to William LeFanu and Elizabeth Maconchy. She studied at St Hilda's College, Oxford, before taking up a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard. In 1972 she won the Mendelssohn Scholarship. She later became Director of Music at St Paul's Girls' School, taught at King's College London, and was then a Professor of Music at the University of York, where she was Head of Department from 1994 to 2001. She retired from teaching in 2008.In 1979 she married the composer David Lumsdaine.
She earned a Doctorate in Music from the University of London in 1988 and holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Durham and Aberdeen and from the Open University. She is active in many aspects of the musical profession, as composer, teacher and director.
Works
LeFanu has written around sixty works, including music for orchestra, chamber groups and voices, and six operas. Her music is published by Chester Novello and Edition Peters.OperaDawnpath, a chamber opera,The Story of Mary O'Neill, a radio opera The Green Children, a children's opera to a libretto by Kevin Crossley-Holland, based on the Green children of WoolpitBlood Wedding The Wildman, another collaboration with Crossley-Holland, commissioned by the Aldeburgh Foundation and first performed in June 1995Light Passing, which played to sellout audiences and received critical acclaim
- Dream Hunter
- Saxophone Concerto Concertino for chamber orchestra Amores for solo horn and string orchestra Threnody The Crimson Bird
- Piano Trio
- Sextet Songs without Words for clarinet and string trio Songs for Jane for soprano and viola, "written for my cousin Jane Darwin" and dedicated "for Carola to sing to Jane"
- String Quartet No 1
- String Quartet No 2
- String Quartet No 3
- String Quartet No 4, premiered by the Bingham String Quartet in York, 2 September 2016.
- String Quartet No 5