17 Facts About Sally Beamish

Sarah Frances Beamish was born on 26 August 1956 and is a British composer and violist.

Sally Beamish's works include chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music.

Sally Beamish has worked in the field of music, theatre, film and television, as well as composing for children and for her local community.

Sally Beamish attended the Camden School for Girls and the National Youth Orchestra.

Sally Beamish studied viola at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she received composition lessons from Anthony Gilbert and Lennox Berkeley.

Sally Beamish later studied in Germany at the Hochschule fur Musik Detmold, with the Italian violist Bruno Giuranna.

Sally Beamish has written a large amount of music for orchestra, including two symphonies and several concertos.

Sally Beamish has written chamber and instrumental music, film scores, theatre music, and music for amateurs.

In September 1993, Sally Beamish received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for outstanding achievement in composition.

In December 2010, it was announced that Sally Beamish had been selected as one of twenty composers to participate in the New Music 20x12 project as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Sally Beamish will compose a new work for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to be premiered in 2012.

Sally Beamish has a series of recordings on the BIS label.

In March 2016, Sally Beamish was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy for science and the arts.

Sally Beamish was presented with the 'Award for Inspiration' at the 2018 British Composer Awards.

Sally Beamish was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to music.

In 2020, Sally Beamish composed April for Sound World's Coronavirus Fund for Freelance Musicians, a project supporting struggling musicians during the UK's COVID-19 lockdown.

Sally Beamish is foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.