Sarah’s output to date has been predominantly for the concert hall, although she has also worked in theatre and in film. She began composing professionally in 1982, having returned to Britain after working for two years with Voluntary Service Overseas in Sierra Leone. Her time spent there with VSO stimulated an enduring interest in world music and its relation to western art music, which has informed a number of compositions since then. Most notably they include The Roaring Whirl for clarinet, sitar, guitar, tabla, pakhavaj, kathak dancer and narrator, written for the Nottingham Now festival and broadcast on Classic FM, and released on the Metier label (distributed by Naxos). It can be heard in full on Spotify and other streaming sites including YouTube. Other highlights include Four Songs of Wang Wei, set for Chinese erhu, soprano and piano; and for the City of London Sinfonia and the 30th-anniversary concert of the Eastern Orchestral Board (now Orchestras Live), Saigyo for two Japanese shakuhachi and two Indian bansuri with chamber orchestra, which she conducted.

Sarah’s music has been commissioned by a variety of other organisations, including Arts Council England and several Regional Arts Boards, for performers including the London Handel Orchestra, the Choir of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the Coull Quartet, Sounds Positive and Operest, and by festivals including the Ruskin Centenary Celebrations, the Spitalfields Festival and the BBC Proms.

Sarah’s music has been performed across the UK, as well as in Australia, Belgium, China, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, and the USA. Her setting of John Ruskin’s fable The King of the Golden River, commissioned in 2000 by the Ruskin Foundation to mark the 100th anniversary of the social thinker and philanthropist’s death, received its US premiere in Detroit in 2016, followed by a performance in Los Angeles in 2017. It was performed at the Royal Academy in London in 2019 for the bicentenary celebrations of Ruskin’s birth. The King of the Golden River was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and recorded on the SOMM label and is available to download from iTunes and Spotify.

In London, Sarah’s work has been performed at the Southbank Centre, at the Royal Albert Hall (where she has also conducted), the Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square and The Warehouse. A piece for Cantamus Girls’ Choir, Spring Palace Song, was programmed for its tour in China, and was included in the World Choir Games, where the choir was winner in its competitive class. Labyrinths for eight hands at two pianos was performed at the Purcell Room by Piano40, and Agnes, a pocket oratorio was commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and performed by them as part of the 600th anniversary celebrations of the Paston Papers.

In 2023, Sarah received a BBC Proms commission for a work for the BBC Concert Orchestra. Seascapes was performed and broadcast live on 8 September. While working on the commission, Sarah wrote a blog in five episodes. Later the same year, the Cambridge Clarinet Choir premiered A Little Dream of Iona for clarinet sextet.

Sarah, who is a direct descendant of the family of Henry Purcell, lives in Norfolk. She is married to the clarinettist Geraldine Allen, for whom she wrote the Spanish Sonata, featured on the current Associated Board, Trinity and London College of Music examination syllabuses. www.sarahrodgers.com