Dominique Le Gendre

Dominique Le Gendre’s accomplishments are impressive by any standard. Her work and career are a reflection of her love and dedication to music. Her compositions reflect her rich, multi-cultured Caribbean upbringing. Dominique's affair with music began in childhood. Her music career has taken her far past the humble beginnings of sitting under the piano of her neighbour and first piano teacher, Trinidad’s great musicologist and leader of the chorale La Petite Musicale, Olive Walke, to singing in the Assumption Church choir, playing in Bishop Anstey High School’s junior steelband, to training as a classical guitarist in Paris under Ramon De Herrera.

This Trinidad-born, London based composer has since written extensively for theatre, dance, film, television, radio drama and chamber music. She composed and produced music for the audio collection, “The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare”, directed by Clive Brill comprising of all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays. Dominique is the second female composer to be commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for her chamber opera “Bird of Night” directed by Irina Brown and premiered in October 2006 and the first composer invited in 2004 to be an Associate Artist of the ROH. Her musical setting of Seamus Heaney’s “The Burial at Thebes” directed by Derek Walcott in 2008 and conducted by Peter Manning was the first opera to be performed at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.

Within recent years, Dominique’s work as musical director has reflected a strong Caribbean flair, with a groundbreaking production of Mustapha Matura’s “Rum and Coca Cola”, a co-production between Talawa Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse and English Touring Theatre that received critical acclaim. Last year, to celebrate Trinidad and Tobago’s 50th year of Independence, Dominique co-curated a two- week festival “London is the Place for Me” with Melanie Abrahams at the Tricycle Theatre in London. Earlier this year at NAPA, Port Of Spain she workshopped “Jab Molassie”, a new music-theatre work with a libretto by Caitlyn Kamminga commissioned by Calabash Foundation for the Arts.

She is Co-Artistic Director with Jamaican writer Pat Cumper MBE, of StrongBack Productions: a new production company that celebrates through the performing Arts, all that is unique and diverse about modern Britain from the ethos and aesthetic of Caribbean synergy.

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