About Sue Aston

Sue Aston has appeared on professional classical recordings, radio broadcasts, and television, both nationally and internationally, working with such people as Simon Rattle, Nigel Kennedy, Peter Donohoe, Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Charles Groves, and Esa Pekka Salonen, Gordon Giltrap and Chris De Burgh.

Sue has freelanced with such orchestras as The D’oyly Carte Opera Company, The Cotswold Sinfonia, and Orchestra Da Camera (with whom she took part in a documentary about the composer Rodriguez. This was entitled ‘Shadows and Light’, and was filmed by a Canadian film crew and broadcast on Channel Four.)

Sue played for Peter Donohoes’ Corinthian Orchestra, and work included a televised concert that formed part of the Jersey Music Festival.

As a soloist Sue worked with the Australian guitarist Pete Hawkes, which involved supporting Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick at a concert at Whitby Pavilion Theatre, as well as playing at various folk clubs.

Sue believes that other composers of the past/present parallel her spiritual connection between the landscape and its nature, the beauty surrounding it, and ultimately the music created and inspired because of it. Some of the other musicians who were also heavily influenced by “nature” and “mysticism” being Bax, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Bantock and Butterworth.

Sues connection with her homeland of Cornwall is obvious in her music. Sue of Cornwall says “Recording my albums took me on a journey that went far beyond my passion for the Landscape that inspired it. As a composer I have absorbed a great deal of inspiration from the natural landscape, particularly the isolated areas of Cornwall which are rich in legend and folklore.”

Sue Aston music is modern Cornish music, taking and interpreting themes and harmonies letting them be heard again. It is as relevant as Malcolm Arnold's Padstow Lifeboat and Cornish Dances and Bax's Tintagel - perhaps more so. 

John Colby