Alexandra Skevington is a UK based composer, writing in a number of diverse styles and for a variety of instruments, vocalists and purposes. Her music is generally highly melodic with nods to jazz, French impressionistic and house music, and often either independently tells a story or has been created to support one. Her main aim as a composer is to ensure that whatever she writes is accessible and enjoyable for people to play as well as to listen to.

Alexandra’s musical education focussed on performance. She is a multi-instrumentalist with grade 8 distinctions in piano, violin and viola, still dabbling in an ever-growing menagerie of instruments. A former member of the Junior RNCM, Alexandra read music at Oxford whilst continuing piano studies with Graeme Humphrey and viola with John White. She was subsequently awarded a senior exhibition scholarship at the Royal College of Music where she studied piano with Ruth Gerald and Gordon Fergus-Thompson.

Writing was, if anything, discouraged in Alexandra’s formative years in favour of classical performance. Realising that she didn’t want to be a performer but not realising that composing could become her career, Alexandra left music. She continued to write for herself alongside building careers in market research and primary school teaching where she specialised in maths teaching. Alexandra was eventually put back on a musical path by the encouragement of a friend to fulfil an ambition to sing jazz. Performing in front of audiences without having had any singing training unlocked the confidence she needed to begin sharing her compositions, albeit under pseudonyms. When these were received positively, Alexandra finally began to think of herself as an emergent composer and stopped hiding her work. In 2018, she left her job as a primary school teacher and has since focussed entirely on composing, teaching music and accompanying.