Lucy Armstrong (born 1991)
Lucy Armstrong is a British composer based on London. She studied music at the University of Bristol, the Royal Northern College of Music, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Lucy Armstrong has written music for orchestra and chorus, chamber ensembles, and several short chamber operas, but even her non-operatic works often have operatic scenarios. She describes her 2015 composition Space Adventure like this:
Space Adventure for percussion and loop pedal opens with a group of space adventurers gazing over a barren, eerie landscape. A group of aliens start to march towards them, becoming increasingly sinister and menacing. The adventurers close their eyes and start to sing their theme tune, but are quickly and viciously obliterated. We are left with an air of sadness in the wake of tragic destruction.
Singing Fish (2017) for alto sax and piano is described by Lucy Armstrong (in the description of the video) as being inspired by the Jean Miró painting of the same name:
There’s a whole scenario in the video description, but the clarity of the music is often sufficient to convey the moods of what’s going on.
Executioner’s Pond (2018–2019) portrays a battle of sorts between the instruments:
But amid the excitement [the composer has written], each instrument is stunned into a state of deathly stillness; the piano has been picking them off one by one. We are left with an unsettled, shimmering stillness. Shattered fragments rise and fall like ghostly memories, until all dissolves into nothingness. This piece is about the fragility of life, and the urgency of learning to value our relationships with others before we, or they, disappear.