has pursued an international career at the forefront of contemporary vocal music, specializing in music theatre, electronic music, opera and chamber music. She is also a celebrated performer of more established works, and her wide-ranging repertoire includes music from Monteverdi to Mozart, through Holst and Schoenberg to Kurtág, Cage, Taverner and more. She has also sung a great deal of Scottish traditional, pop and rock music in both recording and live situations and has even performed with art exhibitions, including one by Tracey Emin.
She has appeared throughout Europe, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and the USA at venues including the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Barbican Concert Hall, ICA, Africa Centre and Saddlers Well in London, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth, Gothenburg Opera, IRCAM, ZKM, De Ysbreker and the Prefectural Concert Hall in Yokohama as well as contemporary music festivals and events such as Huddersfield, Cervantino, Almeida, Alicante, Lisbon, ISCM, Second Glance in London, the Mòd in Henley, Aberdeen Festival of Enchanting Story Telling, and the Edinburgh International and Fringe Festivals, working closely with many composers including Luciano Berio, Mauricio Kagel, Judith Weir, Michael Finnissy, Alejandro Viñao, Andrew Lovett, Miguel Azguime, Vic Hoyland, Isabel Soveral, Karen Wimhurst and Errollyn Wallen, and has appeared as a soloist with Kent Opera, BBC Symphony, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Moderne, The Lost Jockey, Communicado Theatre Company, Second Stride Dance Theatre, Extemporary Dance Theatre and many more. Frances performs regularly with electric voice theatre, Big Mouth Piano Tales and is an associate member of the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble in Lisbon.
She has collaborated on numerous projects with Nicholas Till at the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre at the University of Sussex, Mark Troop, pianist and Music Director of the Chamber Music Company, visual artist Keith MacIntyre, several Indian and Chinese ensembles as well as numerous theatre and dance companies.
She is the Artistic Director of Electric Voice Theatre, whose work includes Harmony Squared – a giant human sequencer with audience participation as well as education projects with a diverse range of community groups.
Her broadcasts include notably Radio France, Swedish Radio, and Scottish TV as well as her own programmes for Radio Resonance. She has also developed a small voice teaching practice in North London. She has composed a works for choirs, music theatre, art exhibitions, plays and commercial recordings including Stella Maris for a community play staged in front of The Victory in Portsmouth Harbour, with Solent People’s Theatre, Shades of Earth and Colour Pulse 5 for mixed voices and electronics, the children’s opera The Emperor and the Nightingale, and Tailgneachd nam Ban Bhuidseach (The Witches’ Prophecy) for Còisir Lunnainn (The London Gaelic Choir), and a variety of library music tracks with partner Herbie Clarke.
