Frances Shelley(II)
- Music Department
Frances Shelley is a composer / improviser / pianist based in East Anglia in the UK. She is signed as a composer with the publishers Manners McDade. Classically trained, she makes music by mixing piano with electronic and acoustic sound. She performs as a solo artist and as one half of the soundscape and piano duo Pianofield.
Her focus is on composing contemporary classical piano and electronic music for publishing, sync and live performance. She has a special interest in real time live improvisation, investigating the moment of creation, and responding to the environment which makes all her performances unique. Her first album Interiors was released in 2005, a response to the 12 Century former monastery Butley Priory. This was followed in 2010 by her second album Wilderness Rhapsodies; this time she takes the listener outside to the bleak Suffolk landscape in winter. Thomas Dolby describes the music as ' Slow burning atmospheric beauty, an otherworldly landscape that takes you to another time and space'
She has worked on several privately commissioned films, including Easter in Art directed by Phil Grabsky due for release April 2020. She makes her own short films which she uses during performance whenever possible.
Live performances include playing at Q3 Ambientfest in Potsdam, Latitude Festival July 2018, and Flipside Festival at Snape Maltings. Commissions include collaborations with visual artists at the Nevill Keating gallery in London, De La Warr gallery in Sussex, the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout tower, and The National Trust's Sutton Hoo site. Her installation on involving a solar powered grand piano, several computers and three 15-foot-high tree sculptures on Aldeburgh beach won her critical acclaim. Working with Pianofield she has developed the unique 'solar powered grand piano' with which she can be found performing regularly at festivals throughout the UK and Germany
Frances also hosts, curates and co performs regularly at Butley Priory. In this way during the last year she has shared the stage with luminaries Lubomyr Melnyk, Poppy Ackroyd, Hatis Noit ,Ceeyz and Peter Gregson to name a few.
Frances was listed by the global institution She Said So on their alternative 100 music power list.
Her focus is on composing contemporary classical piano and electronic music for publishing, sync and live performance. She has a special interest in real time live improvisation, investigating the moment of creation, and responding to the environment which makes all her performances unique. Her first album Interiors was released in 2005, a response to the 12 Century former monastery Butley Priory. This was followed in 2010 by her second album Wilderness Rhapsodies; this time she takes the listener outside to the bleak Suffolk landscape in winter. Thomas Dolby describes the music as ' Slow burning atmospheric beauty, an otherworldly landscape that takes you to another time and space'
She has worked on several privately commissioned films, including Easter in Art directed by Phil Grabsky due for release April 2020. She makes her own short films which she uses during performance whenever possible.
Live performances include playing at Q3 Ambientfest in Potsdam, Latitude Festival July 2018, and Flipside Festival at Snape Maltings. Commissions include collaborations with visual artists at the Nevill Keating gallery in London, De La Warr gallery in Sussex, the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout tower, and The National Trust's Sutton Hoo site. Her installation on involving a solar powered grand piano, several computers and three 15-foot-high tree sculptures on Aldeburgh beach won her critical acclaim. Working with Pianofield she has developed the unique 'solar powered grand piano' with which she can be found performing regularly at festivals throughout the UK and Germany
Frances also hosts, curates and co performs regularly at Butley Priory. In this way during the last year she has shared the stage with luminaries Lubomyr Melnyk, Poppy Ackroyd, Hatis Noit ,Ceeyz and Peter Gregson to name a few.
Frances was listed by the global institution She Said So on their alternative 100 music power list.