Described as writing "music of mood and muscle" by Wales Arts Review, Claire Victoria Roberts is a composer, vocalist and violinist who creates richly-scored, glimmering music, that draws upon diverse influences: from her love of lyrical jazz, to traditional fiddle music, and impressionist orchestral textures.
Born in Wales, she began performing classical and folk music on the Eisteddfod stages. Her dad, a gypsy jazz violinist, gave her a taste for swing, and after graduating from Oxford with a choral scholarship she cut her teeth touring as violinist-vocalist with the Swing Commanders around the UK and Europe. Singing and fiddling on 1940s Western Swing, Claire soon began to make a name for herself as a versatile vocalist performing jazz, swing, bossa, folk and chanson.
As a contemporary composer, her music has been performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Psappha Ensemble, cellist Oliver Coates, Opra Cymru, Uproar Ensemble, Camden Symphony Orchestra, Solem Quartet, and The Carice Singers. In collaboration with producer David Coyle, she created electroacoustic works as composer-performer, playing violin, synths and virtual instruments, for Morley Arts Festival, Aberystwyth Arts Festival, and Sherman Theatre.
Claire is the Winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize 2019-2020, as well as 2017 winner of the Mathias Composition prize, and 2019 winner of a Francis Chagrin award. She has been broadcast on Radio 3, Radio Wales and Radio Cymru.
Outside of the concert hall, Claire's music revolves around collaborative processes and curation, working with jazz and folk improvisers, spoken word, dance, music facilitation, and visuals. Her RPS commission involved making her Wigmore Hall debut with a jazz song cycle written for voice and piano. She looks forward to an upcoming orchestral performance where she will perform her new work for orchestra and improvising vocalist with Camden Symphony Orchestra.
Her debut album Cheating Hearts was a celebration of the swing music she perfomed with friends in Manchester, performing American Songbook classics as well as lesser-known vintage songs, her voice described as "bursting with delights" by Jazz Journal. Since then she has gone on to explore her own unique sound world on her latest E.P. 'NOIR', composing arrangements for the Treske Quartet, writing her own fiddle tunes, and interpreting the melancholy, cynical lyrics of her chosen jazz, swing and cabaret numbers.