Delia is a percussionist, improviser and curator, specialising in creative reimaginations of classical music. Her current work is focused on exploring the climate crisis through collaboration. 

 

In 2023 Delia curated and presented her own BBC Radio 3 series: Music and Machines, developed Seasons for Change for the Sky Arts Musical Masterpieces series with Sinfonia Cymru (reimagining Vivaldi's Four Seasons in the light of climate change as a percussion soloist alongside violinist Simmy Singh) and performed at Shanghai's Music in the Summer Air Festival as the Aurora Percussion Duo with a programme entirely from wooden instruments focused on deforestation. Alongside her local community, she developed a piece called "Bodies of Water" for Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, playing water as a percussion instrument to highlight the corporate pollution in the Calder River. 

 

As a guest artist, Delia was a soloist with the Royal Northern Sinfonia performing Auerbach's Sogno di Stabat Mater for Violin, Viola and Vibraphone at The Fire Station and Glasshouse International Centre for Music. She was featured as a guest episode for Jess Gillam's This Classical Life and performed with her ensemble at the Aldeburgh Festival. She was also the percussionist for Psappha's final "Composing For" scheme, working over six months to develop six new solo works for percussion with emerging composers. 

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In 2022 Delia was invited to be Artist-in-Residence at Leeds University, curating three chamber music concerts inspired by scientific research at the Bragg Institute (AlgoRhythms: Music and AI, Sounds of Metal, Multiscale Modeling), commissioning three composers (Oscar Escudero, Will Pound, Damien Harron) to write for percussion. She also gave a TedX Talk with her world-folk collective Kabantu called "Thinking in Freehand" at the Sage Gateshead, co-directed VOLCANO (percussion chamber music concert) for Multi-Story Orchestra at the Southbank Centre and was made an Associate of the Royal Northern College of Music. 

 

In 2021 Delia was invited to perform alongside the BBC Singers for their BBC Prom (Royal Albert Hall) as a Guest Artist. Other performance highlights include touring Avner Dorman's prolific 360° percussion concerto Frozen in Time for Prague's Last Night of the Proms (Beethoven Academy Orchestra) and across Germany (Lausitzer Philharmonie), touring as the hang drum player with the Mercury-nominated Portico Quartet, playing marimba for The Lion King UK tour and vibraphone for the Great British Bake Off soundtrack.

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She is the co-founder of the Aurora Percussion Duo and world-folk collective Kabantu. Both groups have won the £10,000 Royal Over-Seas League Competition and tour prolifically; from the Queen Elizabeth Hall (Southbank Centre), Beijing's Forbidden Concert Hall, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and Luxembourg Philharmonie to Orkney, Cambridge, Shetland, Warwick and Shrewsbury Folk Festivals. More recently she co-founded Stevens & Pound with triple BBC Folk Musician of the Year nominee harmonica and melodeon player Will Pound, reimagining the folk music inspiring classical composers, launching in 2024. 

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Delia is the percussionist for Propellor Ensemble, creating multi-media projects around the sound of nature and climate change alongside guest artists including Hayden Thorpe, Leafcutter John and Linda O'Keefe and nature writers Robert McFarlane and Mark Cocker. 

 

Whilst studying at the RNCM Delia also won the Gold Medal Competition (the highest award for soloists) and the Concerto Competition and as a teenager was a Category Finalist in the televised BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition.

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She regularly works with the National Youth Orchestra and National Children's Orchestras of Great Britain as a tutor and Creative Lead and also held roles as Senior Lecturer in Percussion and Reflective Practice at Leeds Conservatoire.