Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres is an award-winning film composer, multi-instrumentalist and performing artist. Her critically-acclaimed work blends sound worlds with her love for the piano, orchestrated into a rich palette of electronica and classical music described by BBC Radio 6 Mary Anne Hobbs as “hauntingly beautiful”.
In 2022 she won Best Original Feature Film Score in the Music and Sound Awards for BAFTA Scotland-winning duo Melt The Fly‘s Long Live My Happy Head, celebrated by Mark Kermode as an “evocative score” in Empire Magazine working with MRI machine sounds and Her Ensemble on strings.
Her most recent feature score for BAFTA Breakthrough Paul Sng’s TISH, the opening gala film of Sheffield DocFest 23, was celebrated in Screen Daily as “particularly well used throughout, chiming with memories of experiences”. 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 as inspiration. The OST was released a year on from the film’s debut, this October 2023.
In 2020 Hamilton-Ayres’ bold debut album 2 Years Stranger was reviewed by The Guardian as “devastatingly emotional”. Hamilton-Ayres’ striking second album Play Echoes, reviewed by CLASH as “spacious and dynamic” and described by Uncut magazine as “arresting compositions that fuse classical instrumentation with electronica”, was largely recorded over two weeks at LEITER’s Studio in Berlin’s Funkhaus complex. It is performed by Hamilton-Ayres and Her Ensemble and is released on LEITER founded by Nils Frahm and his manager Felix Grimm.
Hamilton-Ayres has an ongoing collaborative relationship with Her Ensemble, releasing an arrangement of Coma to celebrate International Women’s Day 2021, joining them on stage at Battersea Arts Centre and the Stoller Hall (UK) and working on soundtrack and solo releases together. In their latest collaboration project, commissioned by DONNE UK, Hamilton-Ayres performed the premiere of Next Chapter as part of the Steinway Series at the Royal Albert Hall alongside soprano Gabriella Di Laccio.
Hamilton-Ayres has released with several labels including Piano & Coffee Records and Icelandic new classical label INNI founded by film composer Atli Örvarsson and sees merging her film scores and artist work as fundamental to her love of combining sound worlds and story-telling through music. For Piano Day 2022 she performed at The Barbican alongside film composers and artists such as Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Poppy Ackroyd and Avawaves. She has performed alongside artists such as iconic DJ and producer TSHA, electronic artist Throwing Snow and Talvin Singh OBE and studied continuous piano techniques with Lubomyr Melnyk. Her love of collaboration has also led to projects with artists such as violinist and composer Anna Phoebe on film score Until We Touch and singer, electronic rock-sitarist, composer BISHI on an AV Installation Reflektions. Alexandra is known for reworking other artists tracks including a rework for Vanbur releasing on Human Reworked alongside Mogwai and Katie Gately and Hector Plimmer’s Next to Nothing – remixed alongside artists such as Matthew Herbert. Her first collaboration EP Ciara released at the end of 2021 with producing artist and songwriter Mara Simpson.
Après avoir terminé ses études en Musique à l’Université de Bristol en 2011, les commissions les plus précoces d’Alexandra comprennent la composition musicale pour Josefine, un opéra basé sur un roman de Franz Kafka avec le librettiste, directeur et écrivain de film Tim Hamilton; en composant pour son premier film, l’animation The Great Projectionist de Russell Hancock; et, en 2014, Alexandra a joué du bol tibétain dans Towards Silence pour le Concert en Hommage à John Tavener dans la Cathédrale de Gloucester.
En 2015, Alexandra a joué en tant qu’artiste vocal dans l’installation en direct de Julie Hill ; a étudié la musique en continu pour piano au Colston Hall de Bristol, avec l’artiste Lubomyr Melnyk de Erased Tapes, et a également travaillé avec Up the Ante, écrivant de la musique pour la compagnie de théâtre gestuel basée à Bristol. En 2016, le producteur de cirque suédois Lina B. Frank a repéré Alexandra pour la production de tournée de He Ain’t Heavy du Oddly Moving Circus Theatre.
Elle joue du piano et de l’électronique temps réel et a joué au Union Chapel, Butley Priory, BEaST Electronic Music Festival et au Bristol Harbourside. Son travail d’ensemble, Ground Bass Journey, a été joué par le KNM Ensemble à Berlin et à Londres.
Le travail d’Alexandra pour films comprend la composition du drame primé Last Day of Summer en 2017 pour l’écrivain/directrice polonaise Aleksandra Czenczek; le drame Turned to the Sun par l’écrivain/directeur américain Keith Wilhelm Kopp; le directeur de Los Angeles Kaelyn Maehara et son documentaire sur la pêche anti-industrielle By The Water avec l’écologiste indien Siddarth Chakravarty, et l’expérimental DANCE pour le réalisateur Genna Leach pour lequel Alexandra a non seulement composé la musique, mais joue aussi en tant que danseuse. Début 2019, elle a été commissionnée par le Barbican pour composer la musique d’un film abstrait de danse avec le directeur allemand Klaas Diersmann et le chorégraphe espagnol Pepe Ubera. Alexandra travaille actuellement sur la composition du long-métrage indien Static, travaillant avec l’écrivain/directeur allemand Alex Klaus.
Elle a travaillé avec le chorégraphe Dickson MBI pour la creation musicale de Prana par Fiyahouse au Breakin’ Convention de Sadlers Swells. Elle a sorti son premier EP en tant qu’artiste solo 19-88.
Le travail d’Alexandra est principalement influencé par la musique de film, minimalisme, continue et musique électronique.