(Original Music)
Claire originally trained as a pianist at the Royal College of Music for five years, becoming the recipient of a John Land scholarship. Studying music theory with Dr. Ruth Gipps, she also specialized in the performance of 20th century music, premiering many works by today's leading composers. In 1986 she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, the first female musical director with both companies. She has since developed an international career as a composer, writing and playing for theatre, television and film as well as producing music for many productions of Shakespeare's plays in both the UK and the USA. In 1990 she co-founded the theatre company Phoebus Cartwith her husband Mark Rylance. Their production of Shakespeare's The Tempest was performed in the concrete foundations of Shakespeare's Globe in 1991. Since the Globe's opening in 1997 she has been the Director of Theatre Music, creating both period and contemporary music for 29 of the Globe's productions--notably the 'jazz Macbeth' in 2001, and The Golden Ass in 2002, which contained a 30 minute opera, Cupid and Psyche. For the Globe's international education programme, Claire lectures on the unique relationship between music, the Globe reconstruction and sacred architecture to undergraduates and MA students. She gave the world premiere of her new score played live (by Claire and the Shakespeare's Globe musicians) for Asta Nielsen's 1921 film of Hamlet at the National Film Theatre, London.
During her time at the Globe she has continued to work in the USA, notably in New York, where she created an original score for Matthew Warchus's hit Broadway production, True West, which was nominated for a Tony Award. Current and future projects include: an opera about the British in Basra, Ibsen's Peer Gynt, a new play about the castrato Farinelli, original music for the West End production of Neil LaBute's Bash, and a re-working of Euripides' Iphigenia. With Phoebus Cart she has a new play (in development) about the steel giants Carnegie and Frick, and a period film version of Romeo and Juliet.
Claire is the recipient of the 2006 award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts, conferred upon her by Concordia University (Portland, Oregon) USA.
