ABOUT CAYENNA
Official Biography, August 2026
Alaska-born conductor, scholar and educator Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey is emblematic of the 21st century’s newest vanguard of orchestral leadership—her bold orchestral initiatives are pioneering in tackling the pressing issues of our time and have been featured in BBC Music Magazine, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and on BBC Radio 3. Based in the UK, she is a Lecturer in Performance at King's College London where she leads the Master's in Music performance specialism. She is also Director of Performance at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, Conducting Fellow of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, and Conducting Associate and Director of Research for the Oxford Conducting Institute. From 2024–2026 she served as Academic Lead for OAcademy, an online music institute dedicated to breaking down geographic and economic barriers to elite musical tuition.
She holds a doctorate in Music from the University of Oxford and has held prestigious research positions at the University of Oxford (2017-2021) and University of Sheffield (2021-2024). Her research is focused on the socio-psychological and socio-political aspects of orchestral music-making—from the intricacies of co-performer communication in modern and historically informed contexts, to the politics of participation and orchestras' geo-political significance. Her scholarship has been published by Oxford University Press, Music & Science, and Nineteenth-Century Music Review amongst others. She has worked extensively with composers and musicians from Afghanistan, commissioning and premiering numerous new orchestral works while music is banned in the country under the Taliban. As part of her advocacy for historic and contemporary female composers she recently released the complete surviving keyboard concerti of 18th-century Viennese composer Marianna Martines with pianist Idith Korman and the Oxford Philharmonic, on Signum Classics.