CANCANTATA, Camilla

Camilla Cancantata, also known as Camilla Saunders, is a British composer, improviser, performer and community music practitioner. Trained in Western classical music, she later studied and recorded traditional music in Hungary and Romania, experiences that contributed to her interest in improvisation, intercultural collaboration and participatory forms of music-making. She performs on piano, voice, trombone, accordion and found objects, and began her professional career composing and directing music for the theatre.
Her work moves between notated composition, free improvisation, song, music theatre and environmentally engaged performance. Among her documented compositions is Variations and Adaptations (2014), a primarily choral work based on writings by Charles Darwin and other scientists, together with the composer’s own text. Other projects include Becoming, composed during a residency in Lithuania in 2015, the solo project Cabaret for the Anthropocene, and music created for theatre, dance and community performances.
Cancantata has released several recordings, including the solo piano improvisation albums Time and Again and Piano Piano, the politically and environmentally focused collections Songs for Interesting Times and Trident, a British War Crime, and Meeting Point, a collaboration with Indian classical singer Neela Bhagwat. Her later project The Bug Lover’s Song Book explores insects and other invertebrates through songs combining music, ecological awareness and humour.
She co-founded Footloose Community Arts in 2000 and has worked extensively with schools and community groups, frequently addressing environmental themes. She has also participated in ensembles and collaborative projects including Fractofusus, Radnor Improvisers, Oxford Improvisers and Terabac Theatre. More recently, her creative practice has focused on the sensory worlds of insects and spiders, including the interdisciplinary project The Sonic Spider.