camillacancantata (saunders), musician, musical director, performer, composer, improviser (piano, voice, trombone, accordion, found objects) – committed to free improvisation as an art form and means of communication. Started improvising as a theatre musician and musical director, and then focused for many years on finding ways to compose that did not rely on conventional written notation.
Now uses a combination of scored, unscored, and differently scored ways of conveying musical ideas.
Co-founded Footloose Community Arts in 2000, creating work in response to environmental issues through acts of communal creativity. The work of Footloose continues to explore the possibilities of creating first-class music and art that includes inexperienced performers as well as professional artists. This includes such pieces as Carbon Chronicles, opera about oil and climate change, and Water Stories – a community arts project about water. See www.footloosearts.co.uk
In 2015 co-founded Terabac, women’s theatre focused on the lives of insects. This has resulted in new songs, and exploration of how and when insects make sound.
Also co-founder of Fractofusus, The Radnor Improvisers and a member of Oxford Improvisers.
In 2015 awarded a DAR composer residency at Druskininskai, Lithuania, which resulted in the piece ‘Becoming’ in 8 parts for Choir Brevis.
‘Variation and Adaptation’ (settings of texts about evolution by Darwin, Stephen J Gould and others), was first performed at Amgueddfa Cymru, the National Museum of Wales, Autumn 2016.
Commissions include – music for Landance 2017, outdoor dance at Maumbury Rings, Dorchester, and Dorchester market.
On line performances during lockdown include The Anthropocene Cabaret and the Wonderful World of Invertebrates.
November 2021 commissioned by Artscape to do an installation ‘Hidden Connections’ in Hafren Forest, Powys, to coincide with Climate COP26