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I’m an improviser, community musician, and researcher based in London. I am most at home improvising and my main instrument is the recorder. In October 2022 I released my first album, bulbul, which draws on improvisation and poetry to tell stories about birds, voices, home, and the spaces in between. I’ve performed as a soloist and ensemble musician all over the UK and Europe at venues including the Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square, the Ambronay Festival in France, the Styriarte Festival in Austria, and at the Utrecht Early Music Fringe Festival in the Netherlands. Bringing music into healthcare settings as a performer and workshop leader is an important part of my practice, and for the past four years I have worked regularly in care homes, hospitals, SEND schools, theatres, and community centres as a Live Music Now musician and Performer in Residence at the Great Ormond Street Hospital.
I completed my PhD in 2022 at Cambridge University, where I researched the relationship between improvisation, nature, and colonially between early modern England and the Ottoman bilad ash-sham. I have research interests in arts and healthcare, Sufi approaches to sound, anti-colonial approaches to education, and improvisation as a political project. I have taught at schools and conservatoires including the Royal College of Music in London, and currently work as a researcher with a music and health charity.
You can follow me on @fictionalfatima to keep updated with performances, and listen to my music on Spotify, Anghami and Apple Music.