Born and brought up in Trinidad and Tobago, Dominique studied the classical guitar and Cuatro from an early age. She joined her local church choir as guitarist from the age of 10 and wrote calypsos for the annual school calypso competition at her alma mater, Bishop Anstey High School where she also composed music for drama productions and briefly played ‘cello pan in the school’s steelpan orchestra. Her involvement with theatre, dance and music in Trinidad as a teenager saw her also employed as a runner for the visionary production company, Banyan on the pioneering soap opera, Who the Cap Fits.
Dominique trained as classical guitarist in Paris, France with Ramon de Herrera while composing music for experimental student films by Maria Reggiani and Nathalie Abensour. She was assistant to Elsie Haas on her documentary film La Ronde des Vaudou, a study of the Vaudou practice and its context in Haiti.
Based in London, UK, her musical trajectory has spanned performance, composition, musical direction, teaching, curation and producing music events. She has composed music for theatre, dance, art installations, film, television and radio drama for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. She composed and produced music for all 38 Shakespeare plays recorded for the audio CD collection, The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare, directed by Clive Brill.
Dominique is a former Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which commissioned her full-length opera Bird of Night, directed by Irina Brown and premiered at the Linbury Theatre.
Her chamber works have been commissioned and performed by The Royal Opera House chamber soloists, Philharmonia Orchestra, Manning Camerata, Lontano Orchestra, Tête-a-tête Opera, Ibis Ensemble, Metamorphosis Dance, Ensemble du Monde and Calabash Foundation for the Arts.
She has been Associate Artist to the Manning Camerata led by Peter Manning with whom she collaborated on the Dramma per Musica of Seamus Heaney’s “The Burial at Thebes”, directed by Derek Walcott and premiered in 2008 at Liverpool8 and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.
Dreamwinds, a chamber poem commissioned by photographer and curator Ingrid Pollard for Museum of London, Docklands’ “Landfall” exhibition, premiered in 2009.
She composed and directed the music in the recent critically acclaimed Production of Richard II at Shakespeare’s Globe directed by Adjoa Andoh and Lynette Linton. For Talawa theatre, Dominique was musical director for productions of Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance, Rum and Coca Cola by Mustapha Matura and The Coloured Museum by George C. Wolfe. She has also composed music for London Bubble Theatre, Thirty Birds, Wild Iris, Women’s Theatre Group, Irie Dance!, Theatre of Black Women, Double Exposure Theatre company, Avon Touring and Theatre Centre.
Film music includes Dreams in Transit directed by Karen Martinez; Sixth Happiness directed by Waris Hussein, Kennedy/Mellor productions/ BBC Films/BFI/Arts Council England; The Body of a Poet dir. Sonali Fernando and I Is a long Memoried Woman dir. Frances Ann Solomon, Leda Serene Films. Television work includes music for the two- part drama, The Healer, directed by Mike Hodges.
Dominique has enjoyed residencies at Cove Park, Scotland and Project Row Houses, Houston Texas.
In August 2012, Dominique and Melanie Abrahams co-curated London is the Place for Me, a two week festival to celebrate Trinidad and Tobago's 50th Anniversary of Independence organized by the Trinidad and Tobago High Commission in London at the Tricycle Theatre.
In 2013, she co-founded StrongBack Productions, with writer Patricia Cumper. Dominique is now Artistic Director of the arts charity whose mission is to reveal the very best of Britain’s rich diversity and its shared history and culture with the Caribbean through the performing arts. The company’s motto is Go Brave.
She is currently developing three musicals for the U.K. stage.
Slideshow photo credits: Maria Nunes - Jab Molassie, Trinidad, 2013/Fragments 1, Trinidad 2011.