Born in 2000, Alexia Sloane is a synaesthetic British composer. Between 2016 and 2018, she was a First Study Composer at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and a Second Study Flute, one of 6 composers with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain as well as one of 4 composers with the Britten Sinfonia Academy. She was an Aldeburgh Young Musician in 2015-2016 and a member of the National Youth Recorder Orchestra. In 2017, she was declared the overall winner of the Royal College of Music Junior Department Composition Prize as well as one of the seven winners of the Royal Philharmonic Prize and Classic FM 25th Birthday commission. She was highly commended in the BBC Proms Inspire Competition with her piece Longing for Equinox, written for the St Catharine’s Girls’ Choir (Cambridge). In 2015, she was the first female composer to win The Cambridge Young Composer of the Year Competition. Her commissioned piece, Vigil For Gaia, as a result of winning the competition, was performed by the Phaedra Ensemble at West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge in October 2017 as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Her commissioned piece by the Royal Philharmonic Society and Classic FM, Elegy for Aylan, was premiered in October 2017 at St George’s Hall in Liverpool by members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Clarke Rundell and broadcast on Classic FM. The themes of Alexia’s compositions are nature, philosophy and psychology. She also enjoys exploring the setting of texts from a wide range of cultures and languages. Her method of composing is very strongly imagining the pitches she wishes to be played or sung both melodically and harmonically away from any instrument. She writes the pitches down in Braille music and then dictates them to an amanuensis. The use and effect of silence in music fascinate her, perhaps as a result of her love of Buddhism. Alexia’s pieces have been performed in the following venues: West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge (by The Hermes Experiment, Britten Sinfonia, The Ligeti Quartet, Dr Sextet and The Phaedra Ensemble) as well as at Great St Mary’s University Church, Cambridge, Jesus College Chapel, Emmanuel College, St Catharine’s College Chapel, King’s College Chapel, the Guildhall, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Tate Modern, the Southbank Centre, Handel House, Snape Maltings, The Royal College of Music, St George’s Hall (Liverpool) and further afield, in Melbourne, Australia. (wikipedia)