Emma Welton

Photos credits: 1. Performance, Lukas Binder 2. Grass, Shirley Pegna ,3 Over Shoulder, Lukas Binder 4. Mic Check, Lukas Binder, 5. B&W, Unknown 6. Sound Check, James Poke, Head Torch, Tamas Kovacs. Sitting in Field, Unknown.

Emma Welton is a composer, sound artist and fiddle player. She works with musicians, other artists and communities to create new work, often springing from shared listening. She loves to make music outdoors.

Emma is often found embedded in communities and social music-making situations. In Autumn 2023 Emma and Steve Sowden were commissioned by Wide Open Paignton to create Paignton Lights, a late-night street performance with video, voices, violin and live foley sound effects. In 2024 she and Steve were recommissioned by Wide Open Paignton as the creative leads of co-creation project Strandline, funded by Historic England. Emma is a Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Associate, leading family orchestras and regularly performing with BSO Participate ensembles across the South West.

At the other extreme, Emma specialises in playing new experimental music on her violin. Around her Exeter home, Emma has found understated riches curating A Quiet Night In, music nights exploring the creative possibilities in quiet/silence with adventurous Devon musicians, sound artists and audiences.

Emma’s practice is driven by the climate and biodiversity emergency and her love of music. Her Exeter Sound Walks maps of her local habitat over one year were a turning point. Emma regularly leads Sound Walks for groups of curious listeners in all sorts of places. She composes works exploring different ways of situating human music-making within a broader kind of attention, resulting in a series of works co-created with habitat such as Sounding the Exe, commissioned by Art Work Exeter in summer 2024.

In 2022 - 23 Emma composed and performed music for Earth, Water, Fire! with storyteller Lisa Schneidau and Beaford Arts touring North Devon and co-created Calling the Blue Mussel - a ritual with artists, scientists and Exe Estuary residents swimming, singing and water drumming. Winters 2024 and 2025 see Emma Overwintering with the migrant birds on the Exe Estuary and the River Otter, creating music on the shoreline with humans and birds.

​Emma studied music at Manchester and York Universities.