Borealis x BIT20
Hannah Kendall is a British composer known for her attentive arrangements and immersive musical world-building. Her work looks beyond the boundaries of composition, bridging gaps between different musical cultures while both honouring and questioning contemporary traditions. Through this process, she tells new stories, using music as a narrative medium grounded in strong conceptual intentions.
Balancing fine detail with moments of unrestrained intensity, Kendall has become renowned as both a composer and a storyteller. Her narratively driven works confront collective histories and are often shaped by clear, bold mission statements. Marked by striking and sometimes polarising dynamics, her large-scale compositions often simmer beneath the surface before being overturned by brief moments of bombast.
In her ensemble works, Kendall subverts expectations of “quiet and loud” and “still and moving,” scattering these oppositions in unexpected ways.