Anna Appleby on creative process, alter-egos, scrambled eggs and soup

Anna Appleby is a composer and professor of composition at the Royal Northern College of Music. Explaining her creative process, Anna says music often starts in either her body or voice, or it comes from the environment around her. She explains how the music she hears contributes to her creative output, and the role synesthesia plays in her relationship with sound.

Anna’s performer alter-ego is Norrisette. We find out how she found this voice during the Covid-19 pandemic whilst working on an opera for the BBC Philharmonic set on a fictional farm.

Anna also describes how important she finds restrictions, and the role of collaboration with performers, when commissioned to write new works. And she discusses the differences between writing for professional and leisure-time musicians.