Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey

Conductor

Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey is an orchestral conductor, researcher, and life-long advocate of women composers—past and present. In addition to her advocacy for Martines, she has revived and performed numerous works by historical female composers, often giving them their first regional or international performances in modern times. Highlights include symphonies, overtures, and other orchestral works by Florence Price, Louise Farrenc, Grace Williams, Fanny Mendelssohn, Emilie Mayer and Ethel Smyth, as well as Price’s Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto No. 1 (with pianist Samantha Ege) and Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto (with pianist Carson Becke). In 2016 in collaboration with pianist, Daniel Grimwood, she brought Germaine Tailleferre’s Concerto pour Piano et 12 Instruments out of the Library of Congress archives, conducting its first performance in a century. 

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Her work with living composers is equally extensive. She has commissioned and conducted new works by Nicola LeFanu, Kate Whitley, Shirley Thompson, Solfa Carlile, Rachel Lockwood, Rhian Samuel, Sadie Harrison, and many others. Through projects like Water-Culture: Women’s Work(s) and Orchestral Music of Afghanistan: Looking Forward, she has amplified pressing environmental and social issues of our time featuring the voices of women from diverse backgrounds, including female composers from Afghanistan: Nazira Wali, Meena Karimi, and Elaha Soroor.

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Based in the UK, she is Director of Performance at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, Conducting Fellow of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, and Academic Lead for the OAcademy, a global music conservatory which democratises access to elite orchestral education. 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.