Verity Standen is a composer, director, performer and choir leader. Her work focuses on the human voice - gathering people together to sing, and exploring different ways that people can experience music.

Verity likes to play with vocal music in ways that ask us to listen differently. Her projects take a range of forms – concerts, theatre pieces, films, installations, community events – but they always start with the voice.

Listen Verity’s new release: passing thoughts.

A lot of Verity’s work explores the relationship between music and intimacy. She has woven singers around and amongst audiences (Undersong), embraced audience members (HUG) and created concerts for one person at a time (Symphony). In response to the Covid pandemic, Verity spent time playing with the possibilities of intimate recorded voice – she created, with sound designer Yas Clarke, an installation built out of hours of interviews with people across the country speaking about their voices, which is ‘performed’ by room full of speakers (polyphony).

Often, Verity works in close partnership with individuals and communities to create projects for specific environments. She has developed portrait films with isolated older people (Voices of Worle), filled historical sites with choirs to mark 100 years since they held conscientious objectors (Refrain), and led pop-up performances on hospital wards (Airborne).

Verity was recently an Artist in Residence with An Tobar & Mull Theatre on the Isle of Mull in Scotland, working with people based on the island to create a series of duets. She is also part of the Another Route fellowship, a programme to support artists in England to develop new international partnerships.

Verity runs a weekly, drop-in choir for anyone that likes to make noises with others in Frome, Somerset. utterancechoir.com

VERITY STANDEN PROJECTS is a collaboration between Verity and producer Tom Spencer. We are currently working in partnership with MAYK.

If you have any questions about Verity’s shows, or an idea for a new project or collaboration, please get in touch with Tom at veritystandenprojects@gmail.com