The composer Kerry Andrew is alarmingly multi-talented. BBC Radio 3 described them as ‘a creative force of nature’ – the kind of phrase that often feels like an exaggeration, but in Andrew’s case seems to fit. Not only is Andrew a multi-award-winning composer with commissions coming from organisations including the London Sinfonietta, National Youth Choir, and the Hilliard Ensemble, but they are also a critically acclaimed author, writing stunningly atmospheric novels, poems, and short stories that have been twice shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story award. They co-founded the award-winning a cappella Juice Vocal Ensemble, commissioning and performing work by composers such as Mica Levi and Anna Meredith, which has in turn influenced Andrew’s own composition. Oh, and then they also perform and produce folk music in their guise as You Are Wolf, with three albums to their name so far, and counting.

Andrew sees all of the work they do as interconnected, music and words feeding off one another. The majority of their compositional work has, so far, been focused on vocal and choral music, and it’s predominantly the presence of words that draws Andrew to writing for voice. ‘Words are my first love, and the first thing I remember creating was a story, not a song. Words came first. So long as the words are right, everything else, for me at least, usually follows quite quickly’, they tell me. They started composing in school, with a short blues about their football team, the Wycombe Wanderers (based largely on ‘how crap they were’). But it was while studying music at the University of York that Andrew turned to composition more seriously, exploring the space between pop and classical that led, naturally, to song. Sparse texts with ‘simple, strong imagery and messages’ are most attractive, Andrew says – they enjoy using ‘words that feel nice in the mouth’, that allow you ‘to explore the sounds of the words and pull them apart a little bit.’ In Lullaby for the Witching Hour, originally written for Juice Ensemble, words are broken down into syllables and sounds until they become the hushes, clicks and slides that have become something of a Kerry Andrew trademark – and which also permeate the folk music of You Are Wolf.

‘I seem to be preoccupied with a grand theme for a few years’, Andrew explains. ‘All the work that I make, whether it’s a book or a You Are Wolf album or a choral work, often moves with it.’ One of Andrew’s most popular choral works, for example, All Things Are Quite Silent, was an arrangement of a folk song that they originally produced as You Are Wolf. It’s a haunting, sparse piece about a woman lamenting her lover being press-ganged into the army and sent across the sea to fight. Andrew uses a combination of singing, vocal drones, and vocal effects like hushing and whistles to create a soundscape evoking birds, waves, and wind blowing through the trees.

Around 2018, nature, freshwater landscapes and freshwater swimming were Andrew’s ‘grand theme’. It gave rise to You Are Wolf’s second album Keld, meaning ‘spring’, full of water-folklore songs featuring water spirits and mournful jilted lovers who seek oblivion in the water. From this also came Andrew’s second novel, Skin, about a non-binary child and then young adult coming to terms with losing their father, partly through freshwater swimming. ‘As I wrote it I realised I was coming into a non-binary identity,’ Andrew says, ‘and because I now identify as non-binary The Fourth Choir commissioned me. Everything, all of the things I make, somehow feed in.’

The Fourth Choir are an LGBTQ+ choir who commissioned Andrew to write a work for a 2023 concert celebrating Ethel Smyth. The result was Wild Nights – Wild Nights! to a text by Emily Dickinson. Andrew’s initial inspiration was Dickinson’s passionate correspondence with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert, who scholars speculate was a long-term love interest of Dickinson’s. Eventually, Andrew whittled the letters down to just one line – ‘For what can separate us from any whom we love’, and integrated it with the poem Wild Nights. ‘I had a lot of fun setting that text,’ they tell me. ‘It’s so ardent! It’s just dashes and exclamation marks everywhere. You feel like you can feel her bosom heaving! It’s so full of passion and I wanted that to come across, so it’s very panty, there’s a lot of breath… Which is very hard for the choir!’

Andrew describes Wild Nights a something of new direction, because ‘it’s secular and it’s queer, and I’ve got a more recent queer identity, so it felt like a new avenue for me.’ More broadly, however, it builds on Andrew’s overarching preoccupation with self-expression and exploration of identity. ‘A lot of the pieces I write for young people are about identity and being heard’, Andrew explains. ‘I don’t think I was always heard as a teenager. I didn’t have the tools to express challenging stuff’, so part of the joy of writing for younger singers is providing ‘a small way of being heard and expressing themselves.’ Unlocked is a prime example, written in 2021 for the Southend Choirs in the aftermath of the Covid lockdowns. ‘It was so much about the process, that piece’, Andrew says. Words were collected from children at multiple primary schools about their lockdown experiences, and then Andrew ‘assimilated all their words and little musical ideas to make a piece about their experience of lockdown and how awful it was for many of them.’ Seeing Unlocked into fruition was, for Andrew, an emotional process. ‘Something that I have made with them, has helped them process something traumatic. That’s the reason for me to keep writing music for kids. It’s so valuable.’

Who We Are, too, is about ‘identity, and about coming together and connection’, written for the combined National Youth Choirs in 2015. Written in response to the ongoing refugee crisis, it features ‘a tangle of questions of different groups opposing each other’, with the different choirs singing separate material complete with body percussion, before joining together in a celebratory chorus. ‘It’s very simple – it needed to be, it’s only three minutes long!’, Andrew says, but it’s built on ‘strong punchy messages about people being good to each other. That’s what pleases me to write about – the joy of good human interaction, of people being kind of to one another.’

Whether it’s tapping into folk traditions or building on the experimental sounds of composers like Meredith Monk, Andrew’s art is constantly evolving. The climate crisis is an issue that’s high on Andrew’s agenda at the moment, having previously set words by climate activists including Greta Thunberg for WAKE UP, commissioned by the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. ‘Those messages of righteous anger are the sort of thing I’d love to do more’, Andrew says. Relatedly, they’re currently working on an exciting set of choral arrangements – ‘to be announced!’ Whatever Andrew writes next, it’s sure to have expressive freedom at its heart, finding new ways to address contemporary issues through music-making and collaboration.

Leah Broad is an award-winning writer, and the author of Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of Choir & Organ. Never miss an issue – subscribe today