Caterina Schembri
Photo credit: Néstor Romero Clemente
“Schembri’s voice is fairly new on the scene (…) but she’s already got a distinctive sound.”
(Brendan Finan - Journal of Music, 2024.)
Caterina Schembri (b.1993) is an Italian-Colombian composer and producer based in Dublin. Through her work, she likes to traverse harmonic explorations, literary motifs, multidisciplinary intersections, symbolic meaning, and different orchestration possibilities within acoustic and hybrid ensembles. Connections with visual imagery and written word are recurrent in her music, often working with original text written by her.
Schembri’s debut album Sea Salt & Turpentine, with performances by Ficino Ensemble and Michelle O’Rourke, released in November 2024 under the Ergodos label with a launch concert in the National Concert Hall of Ireland. The album was described as “every bit as rich as its title, its sound world always reaching towards something you might touch or smell.” (Luke Clancy - RTÉ Culture File) and an album with “a real sense of through-line, even of narrative..” (Brendan Finan - Journal of Music).
In recent years, she has composed pieces for a wide range of musicians including Ficino Ensemble, Tonnta, Chamber Choir Ireland, Lumiere Quartet, ConTempo Quartet, Spilliaert Trio, the Dublin Viols, members of the UCDSO, the BNR Orchestra, percussion ensemble Tridio, vocalist Michelle O’Rourke, violist Nathan Sherman, pianist Máire Carroll, and cellist Kate Ellis.
In 2022 she was commissioned to premiere a piece in New Music Dublin and in 2022 and 2024 she was granted Music Bursaries by the Arts Council of Ireland to develop new work. Most recently, MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland) and the DFA (Departemnt of Foreign Affairs) commissioned her to write a piece for the 2023 Bloomsday video. She was also commissioned by the National String Quartet Foundation to write a new piece for Lumiere Quartet premiering on a national tour in 2024, and was one of three composers selected for the 2024 Choral Sketches to workshop and develop a piece for Chamber Choir Ireland. Caterina was also selected as a CMC (Contemporary Music Centre Ireland) Emerging Composer for the period of 2024/2025.
Her music has featured in short films across a range of genres and countries, including the UK, Spain, Colombia, the USA, Greece, Ireland, and Costa Rica. She has also worked as an orchestrator and in the score preparation department for TV and film productions in Ireland, the UK, Malaysia, and Korea. As a producer she has been in charge of a number of recordings with Ergodos, Parma Records, and Irish National Opera amongst others.
Caterina is also one of the founding members of Sonic Gate Studios, an international collective of sound artists dedicated to curating new music, and the general manager for the record label Ergodos.