Anna Meredith

Described by Pitchfork as ‘one of the most innovative voices in British music’, Anna Meredith is a genre-crossing composer and producer whose work straddles the worlds of contemporary classical, art pop, electronica, and experimental rock. She was awarded an MBE for services to music in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

After building an established career in the classical world and releasing two critically acclaimed EPs, she released her much-anticipated debut album, Varmints, on Moshi Moshi Records in 2016. The critical response saw 4- and 5-star reviews across the board from the likes of Wire, Sunday Times, Uncut, Q Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, DIY and the coveted Best New Music on Pitchfork. As well as being Loud & Quiet’s Album of the Year, Varmints also won the 2016 Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award. In 2019 she released the Mercury Prize nominated follow-up – FIBS – to critical acclaim once again, being named Electronic Sound’s Album of the Year, featuring in Pitchfork’s Best Experimental Albums of 2019 and the New York Times, alongside many other End of Year lists including Loud & Quiet, Paste, Stereogum and receiving 4-star reviews across the board.

Anna’s band of virtuosic musicians sees her joined by guitar, drums, cello, and tuba. They have spent the last 4 years touring the globe including sold-out headline shows at EartH, ICA, The Scala, Oval Space and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London as well as appearances at Glastonbury, Latitude, Transmusicales, SXSW festivals.

Their live show has been described as ‘sheer exhilaration’ (New York Times), while NPR’s Bob Boilen described the show as ‘a stormy, ecstatic, endlessly danceable thrill to behold… the best artist I’ve seen at SXSW and one of the most creative bands I’ve seen in years. Music for the head, the heart, the ass and the feet’.

Her CV includes scoring her first TV show in 2019 – Paul Rudd’s dark comedy ‘Living With Yourself’ for Netflix, her first feature film in 2018 – Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’ which won the Sundance Audience Award, opening the 2018 BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival, being Composer in Residence for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, a piece written for MRI scanner, sound tracking campaigns from PRADA, Fendi, Chloe & Christopher Kane, symphonies created for nursery children, music for park benches in Hong Kong and sleep-pods in Singapore. Her body-percussion piece Hands Free received rave reviews from its performances at Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Centre, Utah Youth Symphony, and the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and even flash-mobbing the M6 motorway service station.

She is a regular presenter and guest on radio (Radio 3 and BBC 6Music) and television, and her music is frequently broadcast on BBC 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6 as well as in films, installations, and TV. She featured in the top 40 in BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Power List in 2018.

Recent projects include opening the 2018 Proms and Edinburgh International Festivals with Five Telegrams in collaboration with Tony award-winning 59 Productions – celebrating the centenary of the First World War, the VR version of which won a Raindance Award, installations for lifts for Manchester International Festival, arrangements for Sigur Ros and the LA Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, and an installation for custom whirly tubes and UV lights for the Barbican Centre.