CAMPBELL, Hilary

Hilary Campbell (born 1983) is a British composer and choral conductor whose creative work is centred primarily on vocal and choral music. She studied composition with Stephen Montague and Ruth Byrchmore, alongside advanced training in singing and choral conducting at the University of York, Trinity College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. Her experience as a professional conductor and choral specialist has had a significant influence on her idiomatic and carefully crafted writing for voices.
Campbell has received several distinctions for her compositions. She won the Philip Bates Prize for Young Composers in 2004, the Ebor Singers’ Composition Competition in 2008, the Shipley Arts Festival Composer Award and the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society Choral Composition Prize in 2009. Her motet O Lux Beata Trinitas was awarded second prize in the 2010 Musica Sacra International Competition for Composers and was subsequently performed by the Vilnius Municipal Choir, the Polish Chamber Choir, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the BBC Singers.
Her catalogue includes sacred works, canticles, carols, secular part-songs, compositions for solo voice and piano, and occasional instrumental music. Among her notable works are Ave Maria, commissioned by the Marian Consort; God Be in My Head; Sleep, My Dreaming One; The Isle Is Full of Noises; Plorans Ploravit; We Will Remember Them; and Pour Out Your Light for string quartet. Her setting Our Endless Day, for upper voices and harp or piano, uses modal writing and recurring harp patterns to evoke the medieval spirituality of Julian of Norwich’s text.
Campbell’s music has been performed in Britain, continental Europe, Australia and the United States by ensembles including the BBC Singers, the Polish Chamber Choir, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Royal Academy of Music Chamber Choir. Several of her works have also appeared on recordings issued by Naxos and Delphian. Alongside composing, she is the founder and musical director of the professional chamber choir Blossom Street and has held conducting and educational posts with numerous prominent British choral organisations.