Kerry Andrew
Chair of the Jury
Kerry Andrew is a London-based composer, performer and writer. She has a PhD in Composition from the University of York and has won four British Composer Awards. As a composer, she specialises in experimental vocal and choral music, music-theatre and community music. She performs with the award-winning Juice Vocal Ensemble and with her alt-folk band You Are Wolf.
Kerry made her Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Proms debut in 2017 with No Place Like, a new commission for the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Ten Pieces scheme. Her works have included a large-scale piece for 600 singers, orchestral/rock players and music-tech makers in the Royal Albert Hall’s Schools Prom; a concept drawing and vocal EP for Art on the Underground; a work simultaneously performed by 25 community ensembles around the UK for the Landmark Trust; an ‘open-source’ piece for audiences to complete for recorder quintet; a piece for the London Sinfonietta to fight for the NHS (including the recorded voices of 60 members of the public, and featuring actor/campaigner Michael Sheen); and a work for the national commemoration service one year on to commemorate the 7/7/05 London bombings. She was Handel House Composer in Residence 2010-12 and Visiting Professor at Leeds College of Music 2015-16.
In 2010, Kerry won her first British Composer Award for her choral work Fall in the Making Music category. In 2014, she won in the Stage Works category for her wild swimming opera Dart’s Love, and the Education and Community Category for her community chamber opera Woodwose, written for Wigmore Hall. In 2017, she won her fourth award for her vocal/body percussion work who we are for the 600 singers of the massed National Youth Choirs of Great Britain at the Royal Albert Hall.
Kerry was a British Council / PRS for Music Foundation Musician in Residence in China spending five weeks in the Henan Province in 2016. She made collaborative new rock/traditional-inspired songs based on foxes in folklore.
She performs with the award-winning experimental post-a cappella trio juice vocal ensemble, who have released two albums on the Nonclassical label. She also performs alt-folk as You Are Wolf, exploring traditional songs and lore in unusual, electronica-tinged arrangements. She is a multi-instrumentalist with the rock/classical/jazz quintet DOLLYman.
Kerry has written for the Guardian, writes libretti and made her short story debut on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 in 2014. Her debut novel Swansong was published by Jonathan Cape in January 2018.
