Alwynne Pritchard is a British composer, vocalist and transmedia artist based in Bergen. She has appeared as an actor and physical performer in many stage productions, as well as writing texts, creating scenography, directing and developing choreography for her work.
Alwynne was born in Glasgow and began having composition lessons as a teenager with her father, Gwyn Pritchard. She studied with Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and later with Melanie Daiken, Justin Connolly and Michael Finnissy at the Royal Academy of Music, London. Drawn to the voice by her mother, Claudia Klasicka, Alwynne studied singing privately with Linda Hirst while a music student. In 1997, she was awarded a research scholarship by the University of Bristol, and in 2003, she received a PhD in composition.
In 2000, Alwynne received a Visions of Norway scholarship for a two-month artist's residency at Kulturhuset USF Verftet in Bergen, and later returned for an extended residency three years later. In 2007, she completed a one-year residency at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Bavaria, after which she spent a year living in Berlin. Other residencies have included PointB Worklodge, New York, and the Philippine High School for the Arts, Los Baños.
Alwynne has been the recipient of a one-year Bergen Municipality and a three-year Arts Council Norway artist's working grant. She has also been nominated for both the Bergens Tidende Publikumspris and the Norwegian Composers' Society Work of the Year. Her work Decoy, created at the Heinrich Strobel Stiftung, Freiburg, for the Donaueschingen Musiktage, was awarded a special prize given by the Foundation Ton Bruynèl, STEIM and the Foundation GAUDEAMUS.
In 2002, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the first performance of “Critical Mass”, and in March 2007, her piano concerto “Map of the Moon” was premiered by Nicolas Hodges and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, which later also premiered “Rockaby”, at Tectonics under Ilan Volkov, with Alwynne herself as soloist.
Commissions in the last twenty years have seen Alwynne's work move more frequently in the direction of music-theatre, and have included “Frame”, for the Athelas Sinfonietta, live electronics and film, as part of the European Integra project, premiered at the Sound Around festival, Copenhagen; “Don't touch me, you don't know where I've been”, for her own voice, flautist Bjørnar Habbestad, asamisimasa ensemble and live electronics (developed by Thorolf Thuestad at BEK, Bergen), premiered at the Borealis festival; “Flutterby”, for electric guitar and two computers for Luc Houtkamp's POW ensemble; “Objects of Desire” and “Erika Married the Eiffel Tower” for ensemble recherche, premiered at the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam and Ultima festival, Oslo; and “Living Room”, a film project for ensemble consord.
In 2013, Alwynne collaborated with the French theatre company Scènes Théâtre Cinéma on “Bull's Eye”, for the Marseille City of Culture 2013, after which she co-founded the stage arts company Neither Nor, with Thorolf Thuestad. Further collaborations with Scènes were presented at Théâtre du Point du Jour and Théâtre Nouvelle Génération, Lyon, and at Bergen Internasjonale Teater. Alwynne has also appeared in her own music-theatre pieces “Hospice Lazy” and “We, Three” in theatres in Germany, Latvia and Norway, created with and for the Alpaca Ensemble, with whom she has a long-standing and ongoing relationship. Recent projects created under the Neither Nor banner include “SPELL” (in collaboration with German choreographer Julia Maria Koch), “Lapsing, Unwriting (Part 1)” and “Declaration (Unwriting, Part 2)”.
As a vocal and physical performer, projects include her own “Vitality Forms”, “All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go” (created in collaboration with violinist/performer Susanne Zapf), as well as the series of “DOG/GOD” commissions featured in this publication, launched at the Bergen International Festival in 2015. “OBAMIX”, created for Alwynne by Langham Research Centre, was presented with them at Kings Place, London, and the European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, as well as being filmed on location at the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
In 2016, Alwynne gave the world premiere (with Michele Greco, electronics) at the Firenze Suona Contemporanea of Andrea Cavallari's music-theatre piece “LA PAZZA DELLA PORTA ACCANTO”, composed for her, and based on the life of poetess Alda Merini. The same year, she was commissioned to create a fanfare or 'marker' to celebrate the opening of the University of Bergen's newly established Department of Art, Music and Design, for which she created the book of text scores, “up without an insistent casting away”.
In 2018, Alwynne again appeared at the Bergen International Festival in performances of both her own work “Intonation” (created as part of the University of Bergen's “Wheels Within Wheels” postdoctoral research project) and Ruben Sverre Gjertsen's “Distortion”. The following year, she hosted and gave a solo performance at the festival's official opening royal ceremony.
Alwynne has also worked as both a composer and vocalist with musicians and ensembles from the jazz and improvisation milieu, including Splitter Orchestra, Paal Nilssen-Love, Kjetil Møster, Marc Boukouya and Owen Weaver.
Audio releases of Alwynne's work and performances, include “Invisible Cities”, Nicolas Hodges, Darmstadt disc, 2000; “Invisible Cities” (portrait disc), Topologies, Metier, 2002; “Geometry of Pain I”, Wittener Tage für neue Kammer musik, documentation disc, 2002; “The Barnyard Song, Elena Riu's Little Book of Salsa”, Boosey and Hawkes, 2004; “Subterfuge In Vitro”, with Kuljit Bhamra, Keda Records, 2005; “To the Ground”, Victoria Johnson and Thorolf Thuestad, “Suspended Beginnings”, Farbor Melker Records 2012; “Oh No Love, You're Not Alone”, Alpaca Bowie, Øra Fonogram, 2015; “Rockaby” (portrait disc), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov, Klaus Steffes-Holländer, The Norwegian Naval Forces band, ensemble recherche and SWR Experimentalstudio, Christian Dierstein, Victoria Johnson and Thorolf Thuestad, 2019, and “Les Soliloques décortiqués”, portrait of Vinko Globokar with BIT20 Ensemble, 2020, both released on Kairos; and “Institutions of the Flesh”, Alpaca Ensemble, 2025 and “ARK”, Currentes, 2026, both released on LAWO records.
During the 1990s and 2000s, Alwynne presented many contemporary music programmes for BBC Radio 3, including “Music in Our Time”, “Midnight Oil”, “Music Matters”, “Hear and Now” and “Discovering Music”. From 2001 until 2008, she taught composition at Trinity Laban in London, after which she became artistic Director of the Borealis festival in Bergen, where she now lives. She also spent a couple of years as Artistic Director of the BIT20 Ensemble.
Alwynne has taught, mentored and acted as an external examiner for institutions including the Matrix Academy, Freiburg; Next Generation, Donaueschinger Musiktage; CUNY and Columbia University, New York; Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Trinity Laban and the Royal College of Music, London; Royal Birmingham Conservatoire; Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; The Royal Danish Academy; National Theatre Academy, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo National Academy of the Arts and University of Bergen (KMD and Grieg Academy), Norway.
Alwynne has also shared her Vocal Immersion Practice with students, artists and institutions throughout Europe, including many of those listed above, as well as Carte Blanche (Norwegian national dance company), Nordic Summer University, Palanga, and Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol.
Alwynne's music is published by Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin.

(www.neithernor.no)

Photo: Sandra Jecmenica

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