DONNA MCKEVITT
Donna McKevitt writes music. Music for film and contemporary dance and music for concert. She likes to mess around with sounds, deconstructing them and combining them with acoustic instruments. She also writes for choral groups and chamber ensembles. From time to time she releases her personal work in the form of an EP.
In her final year at University she signed to Mute Records with the band Miranda Sex Garden. They released several albums and toured extensively across Europe, the USA and Japan. During her time with the band she worked, played and supported artists Einstürzende Neubauten, Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, Tricky, Simon Fisher Turner and Michael Nyman.
Her first classical work was Translucence, a song cycle of Derek Jarman’s poetry which she began writing when scoring music for his final film Blue in 1992. At 27, Warner Classics released her Opus 1 to critical acclaim, the recording receiving five star reviews across classical publications and national newspapers.
Donna lived in Sarajevo in the early 2000s where she played viola in the Sarajevo Philharmonic. Nowadays, she sings a bit and plays the viola with lots of pedals. She enjoys improvising with other musicians who like to make strange, wonderful sounds and recently recorded a One Day Band album with Belle Chen, Anders Holst and Thomas Stone for Trestle Records.
Her work for film includes feature films by acclaimed directors John Jencks, Derek Jarman and Mark Cousins. A Song Still Inside, a PULSE production which deals with issues surrounding male suicide by Ed Lovelace and James Hall was released in 2021.
2023 saw the release of her second collaboration with Mark Cousins - his film My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock.
Donna enjoys collaboration and has a long term partnership with photographer Emma Summerton. You can view their work together for Vogue and other fashion brands on this site. She has written extensively for voices and has been commissioned by Voces8, The Marian Consort, Apollo 5, The Gesualdo Six and The ORA Singers.
Donna has also written music for contemporary dance, collaborating with Phil Sanger, Hannah Peel and Charlotte Edmonds with performances at Tate Britain, Sadler’s Wells and The Royal Opera House. In 2015, she won a place on the first Cohan Collective programme run by Yorke Dance Company and a residency at The Aldeburgh Festival in the same year.
In 2022 she wrote the music for Hannah Khalil’s play Bitterenders centred around a Palestinian family directly affected by illegal Jewish settlement.
The play was directed by Maxine Peake at The Arcola Theatre, London.
This year Donna has been commissioned to write music for artist and film maker Susan Thomson for her new film The Swimming Diaries. The film will premiered at The Dublin Film Festival in March 2024. This wonderful record is set for release on June 28th and will be available on CD and vinyl, which you can pre-order or pre-save here.