Tectonics 2026 Artist Profile
Hannah Kendall
Hannah Kendall is a British composer whose music has been widely celebrated, described as “boldly individual, exquisitely crafted” by the Seattle Times and “searingly impactful” by The New Statesman. In 2022 she was awarded the Hindemith Prize for outstanding contemporary composers and, in 2023, she received the Best Large Ensemble Composition Ivor Novello Award for shouting forever into the receiver, commissioned by Südwestrundfunk for Ensemble Modern at Donaueschinger Musiktage. shouting forever into the receiver was the title track on her debut portrait album released on NMC Recordings in June 2025. The album received five stars from BBC Music Magazine, which wrote “this collection may be her finest showcase yet.” The Wire described it as a “boldly uncompromising and revelatory programme.”
Known for her attentive arrangements and immersive world-building, Hannah’s music looks beyond the boundaries of composition. It bridges gaps between different musical cultures, both honouring and questioning the contemporary tradition while telling new stories through it, contrasting fine detail with limitless abandon. She has had pieces commissioned by the BBC Proms (including The Spark Catchers and Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama for the First Night of the 2020 Proms), London Symphony Orchestra and Staatsoper Hannover (including O flower of fire), the Hallé (Where is the chariot of fire?), the Lincoln Center and Musikkollegium Winterthur (He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing), Scottish Ensemble and Staatsoper Stuttgart (And At Pains To Temper The Light) and Wigmore Hall (Tuxedo: Between Carnival and Lent).
Her first opera, The Knife of Dawn, was self-produced and premiered at the Roundhouse in 2016, receiving critical acclaim for its involving and claustrophobic representation of the incarceration of Guyanese political activist Martin Carter. A second production was presented at Royal Ballet and Opera in 2020 and a third will be staged at Dutch National Opera in 2026. Other performances of Hannah’s music have been given by Boston Symphony Orchestra, LA Phil, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, and London Sinfonietta. Festival appearances include Aix-en-Provence, Bang on a Can Long Play Festival, Berliner Festspiele, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Sonic Matter, Tanglewood Music Festival, TIME:SPANS, Warsaw Autumn and Wien Modern.
Born in London in 1984, Hannah studied music at the University of Exeter before completing a master's in composition at the Royal College of Music and a doctorate at Columbia University in the City of New York. Her music is published by Ricordi (Berlin).
Tectonics Glasgow 2026
Sat 2 May 2026, 5.30pm - Old Fruitmarket
…I may turn to salt was commissioned by the Hindemith Prize, which I received in 2022. The piece was premiered at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg as part of the Schleswig–Holstein Musik Festival in August 2023 by Ensemble Reflektor, conducted by Holly Hyun Choe. The title is from Lemn Sissay’s poem Godsell, which refers to the biblical figure of Lot’s wife. My earlier piece Where is the chariot of fire? for large ensemble (2020) takes its title from the same poem.
Part of the string ensemble has their instruments altered by dreadlock cuffs, which are malleable metallic Afro hair accessories. The strings are bound together by the cuffs making pitch production unpredictable, as well as creating a harsh, yet often brittle and fragile sound quality. It is a technique that I have been using with stringed instruments for several years as part of an ongoing attempt to creolise sound: blending together European objects (specifically musical instruments) and Afro objects, usually associated with Afro hair, to make transformed, changeable sound worlds through these sites of connectivity. Perhaps I see something of myself in Lot's wife: her “disobedience” lies in looking back; mine in “disobeying,” or at least rubbing up against, the norms of how Western classical instruments are expected to be played and sound.
HK.
