Six composers appointed to the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme

Across twelve months, these composers will experiment with and develop their orchestral writing skills, guided by Colin Matthews, with support from Christian Mason and additional tailored support. They will each develop a three-minute composition, which will be workshopped by the LSO and Principal Guest Conductor, François-Xavier Roth, in a public session at the culmination of the scheme. Two compositions will be chosen to be further developed into five- and ten-minute pieces, to be premiered in an LSO concert at the Barbican.

I am looking forward to working with Colin Matthews and Christian Mason, as well as the invaluable chance to workshop small scale, chamber sketches with the LSO players before bringing it to the orchestra.

Laila Arafah is a London based composer in the first year of her undergraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship. Her works are often interdisciplinary and site-specific, centring on intimacy, temporality, phenomena of resonance and decay, and self-guided explorations of vulnerable, unstable sonic objects.

Recent commissions have come from Aldeburgh Festival Podcast for their theme music; Purcell Symphony Orchestra’ for their 60th anniversary, a piece entitled CONCRETE, published in the book A Year of Deep Listening; Aspen Contemporary Ensemble; ACA Orchestra; and CoMA. Her work has been premiered at Westminster Abbey, Britten Studio, Oxford University, Dartington Hall, St John’s Smith’s Square, Wells Maltings, Chiltern Arts Festival, Bradshaw Hall and Uilenburgersjoel (Amsterdam). She has also had premieres by and workshops with members of the London Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players, Roadrunner Trio, Carducci Quartet, CoMA Orchestra. She has been awarded residencies at Aspen Composition Fellow, Dartington Music Festival, CoMA and SaM, and prizes including the Tim Stevenson Award, NLF Composition Prize, Samuel-Coleridge Taylor finalist and Junior Trinity Composition prizes.

I feel incredibly honoured to have been selected as one of the composers to write a piece for the LSO. I look forward to exploring the sonic complexity of a symphony orchestra through research and experimentation.

Monika Dalach Sayers is a Polish composer and multimedia artist based in London. Her music refers to broad references of pop culture and current issues including environmental pollution with textile and plastic waste, and societal issues towards women. In her compositional practice, she searches for new hybrid forms of musical expression by confronting acoustic instruments and traditional ensemble scoring against electronics, performative elements, text and various new media.

Monika has worked with ensembles such as Plus-Minus, EXAUDI, Workers Union and Kompopolex. Her piece CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK was recently performed at the Warsaw Autumn Festival. Her other music has been performed at contemporary music festivals including Warsaw Autumn, Sacrum Profanum and Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and venues such as theWigmore Hall, Milton Court, The Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic and The National Philharmonic in Warsaw. Monika held a Junior Artist Fellowship (2017/18, 2018/19) at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama for two years, following her Master’s Degree in Composition with Professor Malcolm Singer. Her music was featured on the New Music Show on BBC Radio 3.

Margarida Gonçalves, a Portuguese composer, conductor and concert curator based in London, earned her Bachelor of Music (Hons) in Composition with an upper second-class honour from the Royal Academy of Music in 2023. Currently pursuing her MMus in Composition at the Royal College of Music under the guidance of Jonathan Cole and Simon Holt, she is a Big Give Scholar.

Margarida’s music has graced stages around the world, with highlights including a commission from the Jacobs School of Music Choir and the premiere of O Magnum Mysterium in Cincinnati; two commissions from Setúbal’s music festival (editions 2018/19); a commission from the English Chamber Orchestra; and her first published piece honoured by Faber & Music, in the collection Her Story by Karen Marshall. Recent engagements include participation in the Fragile Festival with her electronic piece Changing Worlds, and the establishment of the New Contemporalis Ensemble, an innovative and dynamic contemporary music group.

Follow Margarida on Soundcloud

 I am fascinated by the orchestra’s limitless potential for world-making and storytelling, and can’t wait to work closely with the LSO’s astonishing players.

Emily Hazrati is a composer based in London. Her practice is informed by sounds and landscapes from the natural world, as well as ideas around breath, ritual, and circularity. She has a particular affinity to working with narrative and text, and is interested in collaborative, interdisciplinary ways of making art.

Emily has recently been developing her chamber opera TIDE, commissioned by Britten Pears Arts, which premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival 2022 to sold-out audiences. Other recent commissions have included for the Ligeti Quartet as part of their Nouvelles Etudes project (co-commissioned by Britten Pears Arts, BBC Radio 3 and Bourgie Hall), Oxford International Song Festival and National Youth Choir. She has worked with the BBC Singers, Royal Opera House, Psappha, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and CHROMA Ensemble, amongst many others.

Emily’s music has received multiple broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, and performances in the UK, Canada, Germany, US and New Zealand.

Follow Emily on Instagram, Twitter and Threads

Born in South Korea, composer and pianist Yunho Jeong studied composition with Shinuh Lee at Seoul National University and moved to London in 2015 to study with Dai Fujikura at the Royal College of Music. He has been recently awarded a PhD in Composition from University of Manchester, where he studied with Philip Grange.

As a composer-pianist, Jeong made his Viennese debut at Musikverein in 2023 by performing his solo piano piece. His works have also been performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Quatuor Lontano, Tongyeong International Music Festival Ensemble and Les Musicales d’Assy Festival in France.

He is a composer who explores an ultimate human’s inside and complicated relationship between human being and the world. In this sense, as a composer, he does not hesitate to express human’s extreme intense emotion and inner turmoil by diverse compositional methods, narrative structures and delicate sound web.

Follow Yunho on Instagram

 I’m truly thrilled to see my imagination come to life with the world’s best orchestra, pushing boundaries and expanding my orchestral vision. This opportunity is beyond words.

Whan Ri-Ahn (b 1996, Korea) studied at the Royal College of Music with Kenneth Hesketh and at the Haute école de musique de Genève with Michael Jarrell. Ri-Ahncompleted a Masters in Composition from the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) under Frédéric Durieux and in electronic music under Yan Maresz, Luis Naón and Grégoire Lorieux. Mentored by Unsuk Chin, he has received valuable advice throughout his musical path.

Ri-Ahn’s works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles and musicians including Ensemble Contrechamps, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Proton Bern, Pierre Bleuse and Johannes Kalitzke. Ri-Ahn’s L’Oiseau dans le Temps II was premiered at Radio France’s Festival Présences 2023. He was nominated among the candidates for Le Tremplin Musical 2023 of the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco. He received the 2023 Marthe Depelsenaire Composition Prize from the Fondation de France.

Ri-Ahn is currently pursuing a PhD under Sir George Benjamin at King’s College London.

Follow on Facebook and Instagram

The LSO 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 and The Helen Hamlyn Trust.