ABOUT ALEXANDRA

Film composer and artist Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres has a talent for reframing her own emotional processing as vivid storytelling experiences in music. As a BBC R3 favourite, she sees merging her film scores and artist work as fundamental to her love of combining sound worlds and story-telling through music. Her bold approach to film scoring uses unique twists of sound design and recording spaces, away from the conventional that heighten emotions an original way.

Critiqued to write “arresting compositions that fuse classical instrumentation with electronica” (Uncut Magazine), she won Best Original Feature Film Score in the Music & Sound Awards working with MRI machine sounds for BAFTA Scotland-winning duo Melt The Fly celebrated as an “evocative score” in Empire Magazine and continues to be one of the UK’s biggest up and come talents in the film and new classical concert scene. Hamilton-Ayres’ “devastatingly emotional” (The Guardian) debut 2 Years Stranger took us to the hospital bed of her father in a coma, described by BBC Radio 6 Mary Anne Hobbs as “hauntingly beautiful”. Hamilton-Ayres “spacious and dynamic” (CLASH) second album Play Echoes, a collaboration on Nils Frahm’s Leiter, with Her Ensemble at Funkhaus’ iconic Saal 3, said goodbye to her childhood home with an attic full of patchwork memories. Hamilton-Ayres’ third full album Lucid Distance released with Icelandic label INNI, awarded the prestigious PRS Composer fund, is the first ever music recorded in the European Space Agency’s Large European Acoustic Facility.

In a live setting Hamilton-Ayres improvises and performances change based on mood, venue and friends on stage, making each show and tour unique. Her artist recordings and film scores are no different, standing for a moment in time and autobiographical eras of her life. Her feature score for BAFTA Breakthrough Paul Sng’s BIFA- Longlisted TISH, the opening gala film of Sheffield DocFest 23, was celebrated in Screen Daily as “particularly well used throughout, chiming with memories of experiences” and said to be “worth a second listen” by Mark Kermode. Other film score credits include her score for The Oil Machine by BAFTA Scotland-winning director Emma Davie, using archive recordings of an oil rig being deconstructed.

Hamilton-Ayres has released collaboratively with multiple labels including Nettwerk, Ninja Tune, One Little Independent, Moderna and OPIA, continuing to explore and challenge her sound working with other artists such as James Heather, Hior Chronik, Mara Simpson and Anna Phoebe. She has performed alongside artists such as Talvin Singh OBE, Mara Simpson, and BISHI’s AV installation Reflektions. Aside from the screen and her live shows as a musician, Hamilton-Ayres has written for national touring circus theatre, opera and dance. Her concert commissions include the National Open Youth Orchestra premiering at the Barbican and DONNE Foundation for the Steinway Series at the Royal Albert Hall.