Caitlin Harrison

Caitlin is a composer, singer and teacher based in Oxford. She learnt piano from a young age, when growing up in the fens of Lincolnshire, before taking up singing and the harp. She began her formal music education at the age of sixteen at Birmingham Junior Conservatoire as their first primary study composition student where she studied for two years under Lee Differ. Caitlin subsequently took part in the Sound and Music Summer School in 2011 and 2013, working with freelance professional musicians and composition teachers from the Purcell School of Music and Royal Northern College of Music. She was a composer for the BBC Stream of Sound project in 2012 where she composed and performed with members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a concert in the Barbican Centre. Caitlin was a finalist in the Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra’s Emerging Composers Competition 2020, NCEM Young Composers Competition 2020 and Henfrey Composition Prize 2021, adjudicated by Judith Weir. She was a composer for Adopt a Music Creator 2022 (run by Sound and Music, Making Music and PRS Foundation) and wrote for Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra and Reading Youth Orchestra. In July 2018, Caitlin finished her undergraduate studies at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance where she was mentored by Deirdre Gribbin and Stephen Montague. She completed an Erasmus exchange to the Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź, Poland, where she studied with Zygmunt Krauze. Her degree ended with the premiere of her violin concerto for chamber orchestra, performed by Ben Richardson and conducted by Jonathan Mann. Caitlin graduated with an MPhil in composition, achieved with distinction, from the University of Oxford in 2021 where she studied under head of composition, Professor Robert Saxton. She has written for a variety of forces, from orchestras and choirs of varying sizes to intimate solo and chamber works. Caitlin’s pieces have been performed by the Kreutzer Quartet, Oxford Philharmonic, Ensemble ISIS, New College Choir Oxford, Exeter College Choir Oxford, Ex Corde Vocal Ensemble, Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra, Trio Atem, St Wulfram’s Grantham, St Gertrude Cincinnati (Ohio, US) and the BBC Singers. As a keen public speaker and advocate of female composers, Caitlin gave a short lecture to the Trinity Laban Feminist Society on the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’s life and work in June 2017. More recently, she has delivered seminars to The Seminar for Composers of Oxford - Research and Development, entitled Taking Risks in Contemporary Sacred Vocal Music and Elisabeth Lutyens vs The BBC. Caitlin presented her paper An investigation into the choral works of Elisabeth Lutyens at The Third International Conference for Women’s Work in Music in September 2021. Caitlin has taught composition privately and previously at the Peterborough Centre for Young Musicians and is the Director of Music for the Glyme Valley Churches, Oxfordshire.