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Thu 7 May, 2026
Debut Sounds 2025: Memory Palace
In July 2025 our five LPO Young Composers debuted thrilling new works on the theme of memory, working with talented poets from Southbank Centre's New ...
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Young Composers
The LPO Young Composers programme aims to support the progression of talented orchestral composers.
Mentored by the LPO’s Composer-in-Residence, the Young Composers spend a season with the LPO, each creating a new work for chamber orchestra that is performed by Future First musicians and LPO players at the Debut Sounds public showcase concert at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Creating a new work for the LPO
The LPO’s Composer-in-Residence, Sir George Benjamin provides expertise, feedback and provocation, guiding your compositional process. Over the season, you’ll compose a new work of up to eight minutes for a chamber orchestra of LPO players and Future Firsts (the Orchestra’s talent development scheme for early-career orchestral players) and, for next season, solo voice.
Structure of the year
As well as several composer seminars, there is a three-hour workshop rehearsal in the spring – a chance for you to experiment with new ideas, talk to players and receive feedback in a constructive and inquisitive environment. This is followed by further workshop-rehearsals leading to the final concert performance in summer 2027.
During the year, you’ll also have the chance to attend concerts, observe rehearsals, meet guest composers, learn from experts in the wider music industry and get involved with the LPO’s wider education work.
How do I apply?
Applications for the LPO Young Composers Programme 2027/28 will open in early 2027.
LPO Young Composers 2026/27
Meet the composers
Christopher Cook is a Suffolk-born composer whose work spans concert music, film, television and radio.
His music has been performed by musicians from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Onyx Brass, The BBC Philharmonic (through the RNCM postgraduate programme), The BBC Singers, as well as The Dallas Brass Band. He was the recipient of the 2022 RLPO Rushworth prize for composition and his piece for chamber orchestra ‘In Their Wake’ was premiered by Ensemble 10:10 in October 2023 under Gabriella Teychenné. In the same year, his Brass Band piece ‘Excursion’ won the Brookwright International Brass Band Composition Competition.
Alongside his concert work, Christopher has composed the scores for five internationally released feature films which include the Lifetime US holiday film ‘Christmas at Plumhill Manor’. More recently, he has focused on music for factual and documentary productions, scoring programmes for BBC Radio 4 including ‘Two Nottingham Lads’, as well as an upcoming true crime series co-produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC World Service.
Elif Karlıdağ is a Turkish-British composer working across orchestral, vocal and interdisciplinary music. Her work explores the relationship between voice, timbre and space, creating immersive musical environments where orchestral colour and the human voice become equal partners in shaping dramatic and emotional experience. Drawing on music theatre, concert music and multimedia practice, she is particularly interested in the intersection of sound, text and performance. Recent commissions include English National Opera, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Society, Presteigne Festival and the Three Choirs Festival, with performances across the UK and internationally.
Ashkan Layegh is an Iranian composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist concerned with self-reflexive structures. His music has been performed by the London Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Riot Ensemble, and Septura Brass at venues including Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Kings Place, and Muziekgebouw. Ashkan is the recipient of the London Mozart Players’ 2026 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Prize. His work has also been performed by his ensemble, Phemo Quartet, which won second prize at the 2026 European Young Artists’ Award at the Burghausen Jazz Festival, Germany.
Ashkan is trained as a traditional Persian setar player and improviser from an early age. He has also appeared on stage as an electric guitarist, alto saxophonist, and drummer with his ensembles. He studied architecture for two years, which broadened his interest in cinema, painting, and sculpture.
He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where he previously earned Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees.
Asha Parkinson is a composer and saxophonist whose work moves between jazz, contemporary classical, and global traditions, united by curiosity and cross-cultural dialogue. Her compositions draw on devotional and mystical influences.
She graduated from Guildhall School of Music & Drama with first-class honours and a Concert Recital Diploma, completing an MSt in Composition at Oxford (Distinction). Her music has been performed by ensembles including the English Chamber Choir and the Ligeti Quartet. Her debut LP Possession (Ubuntu Music, 2024) was broadcast on platforms including BBC Radio 3, Radio France and Jazz FM, earning acclaim from Paris Move and The Arts Desk. She was awarded a Jazz South Breakthrough Commission in 2021 for Encounters Suite, uniting Syrian musicians, Kalpadruma members, and Maram Al-Masri’s feminist poetry.
In 2026, Asha led the first international Music Commission residency in Saudi Arabia with the British Council. At seventeen, she founded Voices Beyond Divisions, an interfaith singing initiative for children.
Harry Rees is an emerging Irish composer from Enniskillen. They graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2025 with a First Class Bachelor of Music (Hons) in Composition.
Harry’s music embodies sudden change and ever-shifting sonic spaces, blending timbral techniques and fluid rhythms with tonal and non-tonal elements to create a kaleidoscopic range of shifting instrumental colours. Drawing on an array of styles, Harry’s compositions are a poly-stylistic fusion of medieval music, progressive metal, and serialism, forming Harry’s idiosyncratic contemporary classical idiom.
Most recently, the Philharmonia Orchestra commissioned and performed Harry’s piece for large ensemble, I Once Saw the Face of God as part of their Composers Academy. Further UK-wide commissions, workshops, and performances include the BBC National Orchestra of Wales with Jac van Steen (Composition: Wales, 2025), the Penarth Chamber Music Festival (2024), Britten Sinfonia (2024), Sinfonia Cymru (2023, 2025), and The Hermes Experiment (2023).
Watch previous Debut Sounds performances
Contact us
If you have any questions about our Young Composers programme please contact Lowri Thomas, Education & Community Project Manager on 020 7840 4203 or [email protected]
[email protected]
The 2026/27 LPO Young Composers programme is generously supported by the Jerwood Foundation and the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.
LPO Young Composer Alumni
Seyoung Oh
Margot Pommellet
Edward Mascall-Robson
George Stevenson
Michael Taplin
Joy Nkoyo
Niamh O’Donnell
Jorge Ramos
Zach Reading
Daniel Soley
Jasper Dommett
Eliana Echeverry
Zhenyan Li
Phoenix Rousiamanis
Crystalla Serghiou
Jakob Bragg
Philip Dutton
Zakiya Leeming
Matt London
Tayla-Leigh Payne
Conrad Asman
Alex Ho
Yunho Jeong
Rafael Marino Arcaro
Angela Elizabeth Slater
Robin Haigh
Sun Keting
Geoffrey King
Paweł Malinowski
Alexander Tay
Maciej Bałenkowski
Joshua Brown
Daniel Davis
Sylvia Lim
Aileen Sweeney
Clare Elton
Andrzej Karalow
Ashley John Long
Barnaby C Martin
Carlijn Metselaar
Lillie Harris
Laurence Osborn
Ailie Robertson
Neil Tòmas Smith
Karol Nepelski
Stef Conner
Nathan James Dearden
Yvonne Eccles
Alex Paxton
Hunter Coblenz
Michael Cryne
Lisa Illean
Katarzyna Krzewińska
Robert Peate
Jonathan Brigg
Sergio Cote
Peter Longworth
Paulina Załubska
Eugene Birman
Aleksandr Brusentsev
Arne Gieshoff
Edmund Hunt
Hannah Kendall
Daniel Kidane
Peter Yarde Martin
Stephen Willey
Mark David Boden
Laura Jayne Bowler
David Curington
Hollie Harding
Erick Flores
Blai Soler
Emily Wright
Mihyun Woo
Tristan Brookes
Isa Khan
Aaron Parker
Sasha Siem
Colin Alexander
George Lyle
Vlad Maistorovici
Oliver Weeks
Mica Levi
Jason Noghani
Steven Daverson
Gavin Higgins
Emma-Marie Lee
Caroline Rawlinson
Mark Simpson