powerfully eclectic… a subtle musical imagination  –  The Stage

always well heard… hauntingly beautiful  –  The Arts Desk

striking… voices are looped and layered with powerful force  –  The Times 

that rare thing nowdays, a totally successful music theatre piece - The Guardian

I’m a British composer of music for theatre, dance and the concert hall.

I come from a background of mixed influences – my dad is an omnivorous jazz pianist and my mum is a choral singer. As a music-obsessed teenager playing electric guitar and falling off stages in rock bands, my curiosity in Beethoven was always competing with Radiohead and co. Although my interests and musical language has moved on since then, that same tension still remains. At the heart of my work is an attempt to re-engage with the vernacular. I try to use the tools and techniques of modern notated composition without being overly defined by them. In a very fluid sense, I am always searching for a song.

I’m a rock climber, and through this I have a fascination with the human body. I often understand music as a form of movement, and think spatially when composing. Being able to compose music that works with live human movement – whether dancers or actors moving in space – is a real focus of my work.

Poetry and language have also been central to my work for a while, both in music with or without voices. British poets of the last century, including Plath, Hughes and Edward Thomas directly inform many of my pieces, as does the poetry of Kahlil Gibran. I’ve been lucky enough to work with many living poets and playwrights, and this has stoked my fascination with language as something highly flexible, expressive, infinite… like music.

Recently I have had a focus on composing opera. I wrote The World’s Wife with the poet Carol Ann Duffy. Scored for soprano and string quartet, it uses loop pedals to allow the singer to simultaneously play multiple characters. Originally produced and toured by Welsh National Opera and the Mavron Quartet in 2017, I re-composed the piece for the trans Baritone Lucia Lucas and the Amsterdam based Ragazze Quartet in 2022, and that production has toured to critical acclaim since. My new opera, The Shadow Queen, will be produced in 2025.

*not to be reproduced without permission. Concert biography available on request
Photos by Nichon Glerum and Kirsten McTernan