We are excited to announce the two composers who have been awarded commissions through the LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme. Kit McCarthy and Amy Crankshaw will compose a new five- and ten-minute piece respectively for the London Symphony Orchestra. The pieces will be workshopped through the Scheme with the LSO before being premiered in concert at the Barbican in the 2027/28 Season.
For Kit and Amy this commission comes following their participation on the LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers Scheme 2025/26, a supported opportunity for six composers to write for a symphony orchestra. Each year participants receive guidance from Colin Matthews, Christian Mason and Hannah Kendall to write a three-minute piece over twelve months. Kit and Amy were selected to further develop their pieces, or compose something new, and will continue to be supported through the Scheme in the coming year, while composing their new works.
Kit McCarthy
©Ben Reason
It’s hard to express how excited I am at the chance to work with the LSO again. I’m very grateful to the Orchestra for their commitment to new work. Their generosity and enthusiasm have let me explore my imagination in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible, and it’s an honour to be invited to develop some of these ideas further.
Kit McCarthy is a composer from Scotland, working across disciplines and genres. He writes music about the natural world, memory, dance, chaos and fragility.
Molten Kaleidoscope, for the Brook Street Band, recently won the 2025 NCEM/BBC Young Composers Award and was broadcast on Radio 3. McCarthy also scored who will be remembered here, an acclaimed film about queer Scottish heritage, featured in the Edinburgh Art Festival and reviewed as ‘gorgeously soundtracked.’
McCarthy studied at Guildhall with Laurence Crane and Hollie Harding. He graduated in 2024 with a first class degree, winning the school’s Ian Horsburgh composition prize. Recent projects include music for the St Andrews Renaissance Singers (workshopped with the Gesualdo Six) and a set of songs for the Bubblyjock Collective.
McCarthy also works as an arranger and producer for artists and orchestras; his Celine Dion arrangements are currently playing on a cruise ship somewhere off the coast of New Zealand.
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Amy Crankshaw
© Wai Lok Cheung
I feel deeply honoured to have been offered this commission. Composing a piece specifically for the London Symphony Orchestra to premiere at the Barbican will add new, exciting possibilities to my creative process. Our workshop in March was inspiring and I’m looking forward to cultivating my ideas further. I’m absolutely thrilled.
Amy Crankshaw’s music has been described as having ‘a real feeling of ecstasy’ (Planet Hugill); ‘carrying images and sensations’ (Ôlyrix); and as ‘an act of love’ (Opera Now). Her compositions are performed internationally, with highlights including performances at Festival Présences, ISCM World New Music Days, Festival Aux Armes Contemporains!, National Arts Festival, Festival Texte & Töne, Bloomsbury Festival, Aix en Juin, Barbican Hall, LSO St Luke’s, Centre in the Square, and La Scala Paris. Her work has been commissioned by Radio France, Contemporary Music for All, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Ensemble Matters, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the South African Music Rights Organisation, among others.
Amy was the recipient of the RCS Muriel Dawson Award in 2024, the Priaulx Rainier Composition Prize in 2015 and second prize in SAMRO’s Overseas Scholarship Competition in 2014. She was selected for the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2023/24 Soundhub scheme. Amy enjoys collaborating directly with musicians and artists; she has held multiple residencies with Académie du Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and was composer-in-residence with the London City Orchestra in 2016.
Amy completed her DMus in Composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, funded by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Guildhall School Trust. Her doctoral research explored ways of composing sensoria and physicality, embodied knowledge, ecology, and other-than-human ways of thinking. She holds an MA in Opera Making and Writing from GSMD, and previously studied composition at the South African College of Music (MMus, BMus).
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The LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme was devised by the Orchestra in association with Lady Panufnik, in memory of her late husband, the composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik, and generously supported by Lady Hamlyn CBE and The Helen Hamlyn Trust.
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