Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian

Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian is an award-winning composer of chamber, orchestral, electro-acoustic, vocal and theatre works. She gave her first solo BBC Proms performance live for Radio 3 last year. She was the composer-in-residence with the London Symphony Orchestra at the National Trust property 575 Wandsworth Road, generously supported by their patron Susie Thomson. Her work was double-nominated for the 2017 British Composer Awards, winning with 'Muted Lines', commissioned by saxophonist Trish Clowes and funded by PRSF.  Before that, she’d been in-residence with the museum ‘Handel & Hendrix in London’ (2012 - 2014).

Cevanne’s ballet, ‘Seasons in our World’, toured with the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2019, and their return in 2020 has been postponed by the Covid crisis. She has been working on three operas: a touring work with Sabrina Mahfouz for HERA; an R&D with Jessica Walker at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre; and a collaboration with Seta White and her Armenian creative team, ‘Pinch Punch’, at Snape Maltings and the Arcola Theatre to test new formats and platforms of storytelling through opera.

Cevanne's first piece for symphony orchestra, ‘A Dancing Place’, was released in 2020 as part of the ‘Panufnik Legacies’ compilation for the LSO Live label performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Francois Xavier-Roth. She is planning her first ‘portrait album’ inspired by 575 Wandsworth road, to be performed by LSO members and released by NMC Recordings in 2021.

She often writes for the voice, with performances by the BBC Singers for BBC Radio 3, the LSO Community Choir, and the Melodia Women’s Choir of NYC after winning their call for composers and a travel award from the British Council and ACE to spend a month in New York, 2018. Her oratorio 'The Evolution of Eve’ was developed into a radio drama for Swedish National Radio and was a finalist for the International Prix Marulic in 2015.

Cevanne performs with her voice, electronics, and lever harp, often with custom-built midi-controllers such as the Sonic Bonnet, developed with Crewdson and Jodie Cartman. Her debut album with Crewdson, BRACE, is out now on Accidental Records and was shortlisted for a British Composer Award in 2018. She has also written for Clarence Adoo, and his assistive technology 'Headspace'. Adoo has premiered her compositions at the Setubal Festival in Portugal, and at the Sage Gateshead, with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.
 
Cevanne also builds tactile ‘eye-music’ scores where art dictates the composition, often by cutting holes into paper to reveal new notes, texts and context beneath.

Cevanne studied at the University of Cambridge with a scholarship, and gained first class honours, with prizes for research and composition (Turle; Gamble; Rima-Alamuddin; and Girton). She also held a scholarship at Trinity Laban. Cevanne is grateful for her continued association with LSO Soundhub, Serious ‘Take Five’, and funding from PRSF. In 2020, she became the ‘Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow’ at Girton College, University of Cambridge.