Nicola LeFanu

Nicola Frances LeFanu (born 28 April 1947) is a British composer, academic, lecturer and director.

Nicola LeFanu was born in Wickham Bishops, Essex, England, to William LeFanu and Elizabeth Maconchy (also a composer, later Dame Elizabeth Maconchy).

She studied at St Hilda's College, Oxford, before taking up a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard.

In 1972 she won the Mendelssohn Scholarship.

She later became Director of Music at St Paul's Girls' School (1975–77), taught at King's College London (1977–1995, as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Professor), and was then a Professor of Music at the University of York, where she was Head of Department from 1994 to 2001.

In 1979 she married the composer David Lumsdaine.

She earned a Doctorate in Music from the University of London in 1988 and holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Durham and Aberdeen and from the Open University.

She is active in many aspects of the musical profession, as composer, teacher and director.

LeFanu has written around sixty works, including music for orchestra, chamber groups and voices (including four string quartets), and six operas.

Her music is published by Chester Novello and Edition Peters.

Opera

Orchestral

Chamber

She retired from teaching in 2008.

Recordings of four orchestral pieces - The Crimson Bird, The Hidden Landscape, Columbia Falls and Threnody - were issued by NMC in 2020.

A collection of her chamber music issued in 2024 includes The Same Day Dawns (1974, for soprano and five instruments), The Moth Ghost (2020 for soprano and piano), the Sextet (1996) and the Piano Trio (2003).

The Gemini Ensemble has recorded Invisible Places and Songs Without Words.