She has had two ballets choreographed by Lynn Seymour and Geoffrey Cauley; the second was performed by Scottish Ballet in the Britten Theatre, London. Her commissions include works for the BBC, the Surrey Philharmonic, the Manchester International Cello Festival, the Chard Festival of Women in Music, the Bass Club, Bass Fest and the Almeida Festival. In 2000 the Cambridge Music Festival commissioned a work to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, which was performed by the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Nicholas Daniel. In November 2001 Frances-Hoad had her first chamber opera, broken lines: sonata for opera, premiered by the New Cambridge Opera Group, as part of the Britten@25 Festival, with generous funding from the R.V.W. Trust. June 2002 saw two premieres: the Spitalfields Festival commission, and a piano trio for the London Mozart Trio at the Wigmore Hall. October 2002 saw another premiere at the Wigmore Hall, with a solo cello work for Thomas Carroll and Y.C.A.T, and a commission from the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. Frances-Hoad was one of six featured composers in Tête à Tête's opera project Family Matters with a libretto by Olivier-Award winner Amanda Holden. Workshops took place in Battersea Arts Centrein September 2003, and the final opera was staged throughout February 2004 at the Bridewell Theatre, followed by twelve performances around the country. In June 2005, The Glory Tree, a song cycle for the Kreisler Ensemble, was premiered in the South Bank's Fresh Series in the Purcell Room.
Prizes and Scholarships
Frances-Hoad has won several prizes, including the Purcell Composition Prize, the Bach Choir Carol Competition, the BBC Young Composers Workshop 1996, the Cambridge Composer's Competition, the Birmingham Conservatoire Composition Competition and the Robert Helps Prize. She received the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 2002, the Bliss Prize in 2002, and was joint winner of the Harriet Cohen Award in 2002. She has also received awards from Cambridge University, the Newby Trust, the Earls ColneEducational trust and the Sidney Perry Foundation. In February 2006, after winning the $10,000 Robert Helps Prize with My fleeting Angel, Frances-Hoad became Composer-in-Residence at the University of South Florida for a week, where she gave a two-hour lecture about her work, and a masterclass for both undergraduate and postgraduate composition students.
Albums
The Glory Tree: Chamber Works by Cheryl Frances-Hoad was released on CD by Champs Hill Records in 2011. This is composed of eight works from 1999 to 2008.
