Biography

Heather Wastie is an innovative composer, Soundbeam specialist, singer, songwriter, pianist and keyboard player, recorder player, poet and animateur, based in the Midlands of England. She regularly gives performances of her own material, from melancholy ballads and humorous songs, to poetry and voice/movement soundscapes using Soundbeam and sampled voices.

Heather's work with Soundbeam, an ultrasonic device which converts movement into sound, centres around workshops and performances with people with disabilities and mainstream primary children, and she has been commissioned to write pieces for various settings. The Selfish Note (2001) and Seasons & Cycles (2002), were commissioned for KS2 children by The Soundbeam Project and Elektrodome respectively.

Six Kinds of Friendship, a large-scale piece for adults with a learning disability, was commissioned by Elektrodome, premiered in Tipton in February 2008 and is about to go ‘on the road’. This project grew from Soundbeam work for Sandwell Social Services, ongoing since 1998. In 2002 she gave Soundbeam workshops and a performance with Tip-Tone Dance Group (from Coneygre Day Centre, Tipton) for the "Be Different" festival in Guarda, Portugal. She returned to Portugal to give creative and training workshops in 2003. In the same year she was Composer-in-Residence, Soundbeam and the Arts for Hertfordshire Music Service, working in SEN schools.

Heather has delivered several sensory environment projects in special schools for Creative Partnerships and in 2007 completed a four-year residency as Soundbeam Artist at Mayfield School, Birmingham. Other work includes Dancing in the Light, The Manipulation of Mario Net and Look (a piece for multi-tracked voice) for Fox Hollies Special School and an ongoing series of special needs projects called Junkbeam, linking Soundbeam with junk percussion. She has also used Soundbeam with older mental health patients in Warwick and for Walsall Society for the Blind, and delivered training for Sound It Out Community Music for which she has also worked on several community projects.

In 2005 Heather created Breaking Silence, a Soundbeam spoken-word cut-up with still photography, for TalkShow and she performed the piece in Birmingham alongside Dutch sound-poet Jaap Blonk. Other commissions include music for Walsall's Day in the Dome, Lichfield Mysteries (she is their Music Director and Composer-in-Residence), and education projects with Birmingham Royal Ballet and The Cheltenham International Festival of Music. In May 2002 she completed the soundtrack for Down the Plughole, an animated film by young people with a learning disability, in a project run collaboratively by Birmingham City Council, Vivid, The Drum and Birmingham Film & TV Festival.

During 2003/4 she was Consultant Artist for aliss (Artists and Learning Information and Support Service) and Creative Friend for Creative Partnerships Black Country. In 2004/5 she was Lead Artist for Solihull's Creativity Project involving 14 primary schools. Current projects include two in Walsall: Sorted, exploring libraries and museums through Soundbeam and poetry with disabled adults, and Changing Spaces, for staff and early years children.

Heather has toured in Russia, performed for Prague Television and recorded for BBC1 and Radio2. She is a published and prize-winning poet, including 2 small illustrated collections, Until I Saw Your Foot and Poems of the Head in Dynamic Relation to F M Alexander. She has produced 2 books out of reminiscence work in the Black Country, Any Road Up and The Bit Between the Lanes. In 2001 she received a Creative Ambition Award from West Midlands Arts and in 2005 was awarded a BEAF (Birmingham Education Arts Forum) Legacy Bursary to develop her multi-media work with Soundbeam. She is Director of Mind's Eye Music.