It is now week 8 of the country-wide lockdown to combat coronavirus...

I’ve recently been returning to pieces that I have not listened to in a while…

Thomas Tallis is definitely one of the most well-known English composers of choral music…

I’ve spent the last two weeks getting back into the groove of work and learning new repertoire, as well as thinking ahead and planning for new projects…

I was lucky last week to be part of ORA’s Christmas Gift initiative where they rehearsed and recorded 12 carols by 12 different composers all of different ages and places around the UK…

It’s almost Christmas time, with the first Sunday of Advent coming up this weekend…

Contemporary art music over the last 30 years or so has shifted more and more towards a focus on timbre and texture…

When writing music with words it’s always really important to think about how you set those words, and how they are emphasised…

ORA just announced their ‘Christmas Gift’ opportunity, open to all composers, in which they will select 12 carols – or winter themed pieces – and record them professionally for the selected composers…

I’m currently in the process of finishing my first ever piece of choral music that will be accompanied by orchestra…

It’s a new academic year, and the start of September means the start of school, college, and soon, university…

In this third and final week on the run up to the competition on Saturday, I am interviewing Ben See…

This week I will be interviewing the young Finnish composer Joel Järventausta…

For the next three weeks, in the lead up to the ORA Singers Composition Competition Final on the 27th July…

If you follow the ORA Singers’ concerts and commissions, you may be familiar with the term ‘reflection’ with regards to composition…

Even though I am a composer, most of my day-to-day work is spent in the capacity of conductor…

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of leading a workshop day for the selected finalists of the ORA Young Composers Competition.

Seeing as it is the ORA Young Composers’ Composition Workshop next week, I thought I’d write some of my thoughts about the best way to approach a composition workshop as a composer.

Last week was Holy Week, the most important week in the Christian calendar…

In this post-modern world it’s easy to feel uncertain of where to start with tonality - and consequently harmony (the former informing the latter)…

For most of us, our first forays into writing choral music will come in the form of opportunities with ensembles we are associated with, whether that’s a school choir, a church choir - or even a children’s choir if you’re some kind of Mozartian genius…

Since the ORA Singers releases today their new album ‘Desires – A Song of Songs Collection’, I thought I’d talk a bit about…

Recently, I’ve been witness to a fair amount of worry and discontent from my composer friends…

The voice is one of the most versatile of instruments. Aside from the standard singing of words on a melodic or harmonic line, there is plenty that a singer can do to create interesting sounds…

I am currently sat in a coffee shop, trying to plan out a piece of music for a commission I have coming up…

Leading on from the exciting prospects of Stephanie’s piece and the beautifully evocative poetry she is working with, I’d also like to bring us into the New Year talking about text, and how to decide what to do with it.

It is a pleasure to write the first blog post for the Composer Create and ORA Singers collaboration…

A prevalent and often overwhelming element of a composer’s life is applications to fund a new project…

Building upon a previous blog post of mine which investigated Graphic Scores, Text Scores can also be a great way of communicating instructions…

We’ve all done it. It’s a shared human experience. In a world where we’re all busy and spread so thinly, a deadline can creep up on you like a detestable lurking goblin…

Happy New Year! This week I’ll be talking about some of my favourite examples of sound installations…

Reflecting on the current year can be very Love Actually and mushy, but I also think it’s super important to acknowledge your achievements…

‘Tis the season! I KNOW it’s November still but I’m fully ready for all things festive…

Unlike conventional notation, graphic scores can be a way of notating a piece that can incorporate many more elements of freedom…

I’m always intrigued to know a composer’s answers to this question…

When writing music, oftentimes it has required forcing myself to sit down with a frown on my face…

I’ve loved sharing some of my experiences of life as a young composer with you over the past year, and I really hope that you have enjoyed reading them…

These few months are an exciting time for ORA Singers, as they look ahead to hosting their first Composition Competition Final Concert…

In this blog post I wanted to talk briefly about notation. Notation is a part of composing that I lack confidence in…

Picture the scene… For weeks, you’ve been lying awake at night with concepts and ideas flooding your head. You’ve spent hours writing this piece of music, and now it’s finally finished.

This week I’ve arrived back to Durham for my final term as a music undergraduate. I have very mixed emotions about it!

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve really felt like Spring has sprung this past week! I’ve been back home in Belfast for a few weeks now…

I thought in this week’s blog I would talk about Composer-in-Residences, and specifically tell you about my experience of holding such a role with a national youth choir…

Last week was International Women’s Week, and it was an especially great time within the music sphere to see so many people celebrating the work of women composers, conductors and performers…

As well as being a composer, I’m a singer, and I especially love choral singing…

Following on from my blog post about studying Music at university, I thought I would talk about one of the specific ways I’ve received composition tuition, which is through workshops…

In this week’s blog post, I thought I would share some my experiences of studying Composition at university…

I found Rory’s last blog post on text so interesting, so I thought I would continue in a similar direction and share some of my own tips on text…

Happy New Year!! If you have made it one of your resolutions of 2019 to compose more music, then you have come to the right place…

For my first blog post I just thought I would give you a little bit of an introduction into who I am…