Alicia Jane (AJ) Turner is a composer, sound designer and performance artist whose work spans contemporary theatre, live art and experimental music.

Their practice focuses on the raw, visceral affectivity of sound in interdisciplinary performance, specialising in live scoring contemporary and experimental theatre productions. They create and collaborate on provocative, political and fiercely vulnerable projects through an intersectional feminist, queer lens. Both guttural and ethereal, their compositions fuse the textures of noise and ambient music through classical instrumentation and electronics to create intricately layered, multi-sensory pieces. In their research they interrogate the relationship between sound, affect and gender, and how sound and lighting design works to generate atmospheres in sensorial encounters with contemporary theatre.

Their composition and experimental music work includes commissions from the London Sinfonietta, the London Philharmonia Orchestra, Spitalfields Music and National Sawdust (New York), solo performances and sound installations commissioned by The Yard Theatre, Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice and Radar (Denmark) and their ongoing collaboration with NYX: electronic drone choir. They were a Bang on a Can Composer Fellow in 2018, and a London Sinfonietta Writing The Future composer from 2019-2022, for which they premiered their monodrama opera exploring trauma, sexual and patriarchal violence, “Tell me when you get home.” at the Southbank Centre.

In their theatre and performance practice AJ has been an ongoing collaborator with Christopher Brett Bailey since 2014, composing and performing the music in his two critically acclaimed productions This Is How We Die and Kissing The Shotgun Goodnight, which have toured across the UK and internationally in venues including The Almeida, Battersea Arts Centre, Ovalhouse, Brighton Dome and festivals including Edinburgh Fringe, Sydney Festival and Progress Festival (Toronto). They premiered their first solo theatre piece Breathe (Everything Is Going To Be Okay) at SPILL Festival of Performance 2016, which has since been performed at venues including Rich Mix, The Lowry for The Flare International Festival of New Theatre, and Camden People’s Theatre. Other theatre and performance collaborations include composition and sound design for Louise Orwin’s OH YES OH NO, CRY CRY KILL KILL and digital project UR FAVOURITE SCARY MOVIE, composition and sound design for Ray Young’s sound and instruction-led theatre experience THIRST TRAP and their immersive water, light and soundscape environment installation BODIES, composition and sound design for Sarah Hopfinger’s digital and live project Pain & I presented for Take Me Somewhere and at Summerhall for Edinburgh Fringe, and sound design for Ginger Johnson’s How To Catch a Krampus and Escape From Planet Trash at the Pleasance Theatre. Recent theatre and performance projects include their queer science-fiction project JENNY in collaboration with interdisciplinary artist RODENT which premiered at SPILL Festival of Performance, sound design and live scoring Freddie Wulf’s experimental performance piece we are all made of stars, and composition and sound design for Wattle and Daub’s The Lonesome Death of Eng Bunker.

AJ is a PhD candidate researching sound design, lighting design and gender in contemporary theatre and performance at Queen Mary University of London. They are an Associate Artist of Traumascapes, a survivor-led organisation dedicated to changing the ecosystem of trauma and creating new horizons for survivors through art and science.

Photos courtesy of thelastdinosaur performing with NYX