Angela Elizabeth Slater - Composer
Territories - General Management, Worldwide
Jonathan Hennessey-Brown +44 7939 597760
Artist Manager
jonathan@hennesseybrownmusic.com
Dr Angela Elizabeth Slater is a UK-based composer, whose compositional voice focuses on musically mapping aspects of the natural world into the fabric of music.
Nominated for an Ivors Classical Award for her work, Through the Fading Hour, her music has been described as ‘intricate...and often ravishingly scored’ and making ‘deft and vivid use of instrumental colour’. Slater collaborates with performers, ensembles, and initiatives worldwide to musically explore sounds, colours, and textures.
Her work The Louder the Birds Sing received its Dutch premiere by Residentie Orkest den Haag after being selected as the winner of Gaudeamus’s orchestral category. Slater’s recent creative projects include fellowships at the Mostly Modern-Music Festival; Hong Kong Intimacy of Creativity Festival, working with the Viano Quartet on Distorted Light; Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, for a commission of Where skies aflame; and Creative Dialogues Festival, for the world premiere of a tulip, iron. She was a Britten Pears Young Artist, where she worked with Oliver Knussen, and has previously held Composition Fellowships at Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Philharmonic Society to name a few. She was also a Mendelssohn Scholarship award holder, where she spent time studying in the United States.
In 2024 she had several exciting performances and commissions including performances of Kármán line for symphony orchestra, Orbits edge for chamber ensemble, and This is Jane opera scene for 2 sopranos and piano as part of her compositional fellowship at Aspen Music Festival.
In 2025 her work Mountains become Oceans a concerto for harp and percussion received its world premiere by Amarillo Symphony Orchestra with conductor George Jackson, harpist Rosanna Moore and percussionist Hannah Weaver on 28th February and 1st March 2025. Other recent premieres include Ways of Looking at a Blackbird at New Music on the Bayou in the US and "Zauberwald" for the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and DETECT CLASSICAL MUSIC in Germany. In the latter half of 2025 and into 2026 Slater is looking forward to beginning work on her first full-length opera This is Jane in partnership with librettist Kendra Preston Leonard.
Born in the Midlands, she studied Music at the University of Nottingham. Her PhD was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, where she produced a series of works that engaged with the natural world. Following her doctoral studies, she has studied with a number of leading composers, including Julian Anderson, Oliver Knussen, Ken Hesketh, Michael Gandolfi, and Chris Theofandis. Alongside her composing work, she established the Illuminate Women’s Music concert series and commissioning project, which shines a light on the creativity of women composers, both past and present. Slater’s Illuminate work has led to the commissioning of over 40 new works, many of which have been performed on multiple occasions right across the UK and internationally. She has authored two academic book chapters on female representation in the UK’s music scene and in education, previously lectured at Cardiff University and the University of Nottingham, and has given invited talks for organisations such as Welsh National Opera, University of Huddersfield, Cardiff University and University of South Florida.
