Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey

• Director of Performance, St Catherine's College, University of Oxford

Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey is Director of Performance at St Catherine's College, University of Oxford, Lecturer in Performance at King's College London, and a freelance orchestral conductor. Her work brings together performance, research and public engagement, with a particular focus on the social, political and psychological dimensions of orchestral music-making.

Born in Alaska and based in the UK, she holds a doctorate in Music from the University of Oxford and has held research positions at the University of Oxford and the University of Sheffield. Her scholarship examines orchestras as artistic, social and geopolitical institutions, ranging from co-performer communication and creativity in rehearsal and performance to the politics of participation, intercultural collaboration and the role of orchestras in contexts of displacement and conflict. Her publications include work with Oxford University Press, Music & Science and Nineteenth-Century Music Review.

As a conductor and researcher, Cayenna has developed projects that connect orchestral practice with contemporary social questions. Her work on Afghanistan's orchestral traditions grew out of collaborations with musicians from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and the Afghan Women's Orchestra, including a 2019 Oxford residency and subsequent research with Afghan musicians in exile. She also works extensively on historically underrepresented composers, including women composers of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Cayenna's conducting projects have included national and regional premieres of works by composers such as Florence Price, Louise Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn, Grace Williams and Germaine Tailleferre, alongside commissions and premieres of new music addressing environmental and social issues. Her initiatives have been featured in BBC Music Magazine, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, Gramophone and on BBC Radio 3.

She is also associated with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, the Oxford Conducting Institute and OAcademy, a global music conservatory widening access to advanced orchestral training.

• –present Director of Performance, St Catherine's College, University of Oxford

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