Deborah Pritchard was awarded a British Composer Award for her solo violin piece Inside Colour in 2017. Her music has been performed by world-class ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Philharmonia, BBC Singers and the Choir of New College Oxford with soloists including Natalie Clein, Nicola Benedetti and Tina Thing Helseth. Recent works include her graphic score Colour Circle, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta over lockdown whilst future premieres include a new violin concerto for Jennifer Pike and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
As a synaesthetic composer Pritchard has worked with numerous visual artists including Maggi Hambling, Hughie O’Donoghue and Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. Her violin concerto Wall of Water, after the paintings by Maggi Hambling, was performed by Harriet Mackenzie and the English String Orchestra at the National Gallery in 2015, reviewed by Gramophone as a ‘work that will take one’s breath away’. Her new symphonic work Songs after Kandinsky will be premiered in China in 2023. She also paints music and created a series of music maps for the London Sinfonietta, described in The Times as ‘beautifully illustrated…paying visual homage to those wonderful medieval maps of the world.’ Her paintings were exhibited at the Amazing Women of the Royal Academy of Music 2017-2018 exhibition.
Deborah was awarded an entrance scholarship to study composition with Simon Bainbridge for her MMus Degree at the Royal Academy of Music and completed her DPhil at Worcester College, Oxford where she studied with Robert Saxton. She currently teaches composition tutorials at the University of Oxford and is Associate of both the Royal Academy of Music and the Faculty of Music, Oxford.