Six composers appointed to the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme 2023/24

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.

From a record number of applications, we are delighted to announce that the following composers will join the scheme for the 2023/24 season:

Isabella Gellis is a British-Canadian composer of acoustic music. Her work often focuses on imagined and disguised sounds, steeped in the sincerity of the silly, absurd, and surreal. Recent highlights include a suite for pianist Joseph Havlat based on Biber’s Battalia à 10 premiered at Dartington, a trio about bowing and blowing for members of Explore Ensemble (Listenpony), a string trio about moss premiered at Wigmore Hall (Nash Ensemble commission) and an immersive operatic vignette about getting a haircut (Shadwell Opera commission). Between 2015 and 2022, she studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Edmund Finnis, Christopher Austin and Morgan Hayes, graduating with a Bicentenary Prize for all-round excellence and the Musicians’ Company Priaulx Rainier Prize.

Geoffrey King is an American composer in London influenced by camp aesthetics, interpersonal relationships, and the nostalgic power of music. He writes music about people. He always strives for musical clarity, disarming straightforwardness and good storytelling. ‘Music making is really relationship making; more than anything else, I love making things with my friends.’

Omri Kochavi is a composer and guitarist based in London and Tel Aviv. His music draws its language from a broad range of influences, focusing on the reality of sounds, people, plants and the interactions between them. Most recently, he was commissioned for the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival as a 2021/22 Britten Pears Young Artist, writing a set of pieces exploring his Iraqi-Jewish heritage in collaboration with Iraq-born Israeli poet Amira Hess, culminating in Kishtatos, a new choral piece for the BBC Singers. Other recent and upcoming projects include works performed by artists such as EXAUDI, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Trio Mazzolini, Katy Thomson, Lotte Betts-Dean, Slide Action, Shiri Coneh and Hagai Yodan.

Omri is also an avid amateur gardener, interested in the connection between growing food and making sounds. He currently holds a Junior Fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he graduated with a master’s degree in composition in 2022, working with Julian Anderson and Laurence Crane.

Eden Lonsdale  is a German/British composer based between the UK and Germany. He is fascinated by music’s ability to turn our experience of time almost into an experience of physical space. Often using very limited materials, he creates soundworlds that attempt to draw the ear into the smallest details and hope to inspire the listener’s self-guided exploration into the music’s manifold layers.

He has written concert music for and with soloists such as Satoko Inoue, Toby Hughes, Anton Lukoszevieze and Heather Roche, as well as ensembles including EXAUDI, Apartment House, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Orkest de Ereprijs, Orchester im Treppenhaus, Ensemble Intercontemporain, RIOT Ensemble and ICTUS. His pieces have been performed at festivals such as EstOvest (Torino), Blurred Edges (Hamburg), Distat Terra (Patagonia) and The Dutch Harp Festival (Utrecht) as well as broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s ‘New Music Show’. He studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Malcolm Singer, Cassandra Miller and Julian Anderson, and at the Kunstuniversität Graz with Klaus Lang.

Marcus Rock studies at Birmingham Conservatoire (2020–24), on a Scholarship after abandoning film-making. He has composed music for the Cheltenham Music Festival (2020 and 2021 consecutively), having written a piece for violinist Fenella Humphreys and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, and was selected as a composer on the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme (2022/23), working with highly skilled contemporary musicians, receiving one-to-one tuition from Colin Mathews and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

More recently, he won the 2022 Echo from the Old Times Chamber Music Commission, meaning he will have work performed by students of the China Central Conservatory of Music. He has been invited to study at Columbia University with George Lewis upon completion of his degree.

Sasha Scott (b 2002) is a composer and electronic artist from London currently studying composition with Mark-Anthony Turnage at the Royal College of Music, as a Noël Coward Composition Scholar supported by the Victor Dahdaleh Foundation. In 2019 she was the senior winner of BBC Young Composer of the Year for her electro-acoustic work Humans May Not Apply for strings, percussion and electronics.

Since then, Sasha has written for the principal string players of the Aurora Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Her works have been performed in venues such as the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Cadogan Hall and the Purcell Room. Her music has been played on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 6, and NTS Radio. Sasha is currently a composer on the Britten Pears Young Artist programme 2022/23 and is writing a piece for large chamber ensemble to be premiered in the Aldeburgh Festival 2023.