Born in London in 1951, Cecilia McDowall is one of UK’s most acclaimed composers. Winner of the 2020 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection, her early professional career was dedicated to teaching, both at the Yehudi Menuhin School and Trinity College of Music. She turned seriously to her first love—composition—in her forties, studying with Joseph Horovitz, Robert Saxton and Adam Gorb; since then she has been shortlisted eight times for the British Composer Awards (now known as The Ivors Composer Awards), and in 2014 she won the British Composer Award for choral music. In 2013 McDowall received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Portsmouth, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music.

Perhaps best known for her choral music, McDowall’s recent compositions include commissions for the BBC Singers, Westminster Cathedral Choir, King’s College, Cambridge and St John’s College, Cambridge. Particular highlights include 3 Latin Motets, the Chandos recording of which won a GRAMMY Award, and the premiere of the Da Vinci Requiem by Wimbledon Choral Society and the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London.

McDowall’s distinctive style fuses fluent melodic lines with occasional dissonant harmonies and rhythmic exuberance. She is inspired by extra-musical influences: literature, art, dance, science, flight, architecture, and beauty in the landscape. She feels that the organ is ‘a terrific instrument to write for’, and relishes its potential for ‘so much colour, power, delicacy and texture’.

– William Fox