Poppy Ackroyd: Composer, Pianist and Violinist

Poppy Ackroyd is a British composer, pianist and violinist. She is a regular member of the live project Hidden Orchestra. Her work is noted for a "non-conformist approach to producing sounds".

She grew up in Bermondsey in London, and her father is the visual artist Norman Ackroyd. At the age of seven she decided her future career would be as a pianist, and she was classically trained on violin and piano from an early age. She studied piano and composition at the University of Edinburgh and holds a master's degree in piano performance.

Her music is made by manipulating and multi-tracking sounds from the violin and the piano. Her debut album, Escapement, was released in December 2012. A DVD, Escapement Visualised, with bespoke visuals by Lumen for each track, followed in September 2014.

Her second album, Feathers, arrived in November 2014 and builds on the concept behind her debut, with most sounds again coming from the violin and the piano, though the tracks also feature other keyboard and string instruments. In 2017 she signed to Björk's label One Little Independent Records and released a mini album, Sketches, in August. Sketches is an acoustic solo piano album of ten tracks: six are re-workings of tracks from Escapement and Feathers, and four are arrangements of new tracks from her latest full album, Resolve.

Resolve features guest instrumentalists for the first time, including Manu Delago on hang, Mike Lesirge on flute and clarinets, and Jo Quail on cello. Her debut album consisted of violin and piano played by Ackroyd, while Resolve incorporated improvisation from Manu Delago, Jo Quail and Mike Lesirge. Her discography includes Escapement (Denovali Records, 2012), the Escapement DVD (Denovali Records, 2012), Feathers (Denovali Records, 2014), Sketches (One Little Independent, 2017), Resolve (One Little Independent, 2018) and Pause (One Little Independent, 2021).