Sir George William John Benjamin, CBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. He is also a conductor, pianist and teacher. He is well known for operas Into the Little Hill (2006), Written on Skin (2009–2012) and Lessons in Love and Violence (2015–2017)—all with librettos by Martin Crimp. In 2019, critics at The Guardian ranked Written on Skin as the second best work of the 21st-century.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Joby Talbot is a British composer. He has written for a wide variety of purposes, with a broad range of styles, including instrumental and vocal concert music, film and television scores, pop arrangements and works for dance. He is known, to sometimes disparate audiences, for quite different works.
Sir James Loy MacMillan, TOSD is a Scottish classical composer and conductor.
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.
Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Noted for his large-scale orchestral compositions, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composer's music, including works by Berlioz, Britten, Dowland, Mahler, Purcell and Schubert. Other arrangements include orchestrations of all Debussy's 24 Préludes, both books of Debussy's Images, and two movements—Oiseaux tristes and La vallée des cloches—from Ravel's Miroirs. Having received a doctorate from University of Sussex on the works of Mahler, from 1964–1975 Matthews worked with his brother David Matthews and musicologist Deryck Cooke on completing a performance version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.
Roxanna Panufnik is a British composer of Polish descent. She is the daughter of the Polish composer and conductor Sir Andrzej Panufnik and his second wife Camilla, née Jessel.
Dame Judith Weir is a British composer. She served as Master of the King's Music from 2014 to 2024. Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir was the first woman to hold this office.
John Pierre Herman Joubert was a British composer of South African birth, particularly of choral works. He lived in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, England, for over 50 years. A music academic in the universities of Hull and Birmingham for 36 years, Joubert took early retirement in 1986 to concentrate on composing and remained active into his eighties. Though perhaps best known for his choral music, particularly the carols Torches and There is No Rose of Such Virtue and the anthem O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing, Joubert composed over 160 works including three symphonies, four concertos and seven operas.
The Adventures of Pinocchio is a 2007 opera in two acts by Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton based on the 1883 Italian novel of the same name by Carlo Collodi. It tells of the creation of the wooden puppet Pinocchio and some of his adventures on the way to becoming a real boy.
Alasdair Middleton is a leading British opera librettist and playwright with librettos commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Opera North and the Berlin Philharmonic among others. He is responsible for a series of important operatic collaborations with the British composer Jonathan Dove including The Enchanted Pig and The Adventures of Pinocchio. He has also worked extensively with the choreographer Will Tuckett both as librettist and co-director, and has written several works with Matthew King including the award-winning community opera On London Fields. Middleton’s plays include Aeschylean Nasty, Shame on you Charlotte, Casta Diva and Einmal. He teaches the Junior Drama Classes at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Matthew King is a British composer, pianist, and educator. His works include opera, piano and chamber music, and choral and orchestral pieces. He has been described by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music, as “one of Britain's most adventurous composers, utterly skilled, imaginative, and resourceful."
Paul Mealor CLJ FLSW is a Welsh composer. A large proportion of his output is for chorus, both a cappella and accompanied. He came to wider notice when his motet Ubi Caritas et Amor was performed at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. He later composed the song "Wherever You Are", which became the 2011 Christmas number one in the UK Singles Chart. He has also composed two operas, four symphonies, concerti and chamber music.
David Sawer, is a British composer of opera and choral, orchestral and chamber music.
Cecilia McDowall is a British composer, particularly known for her choral compositions.
Hans Vogt was a German composer and conductor.
Opera North is an opera company based at The Grand Theatre, Leeds, England. This article covers the period during which the Music Director has been Richard Farnes.
Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE is a British baritone and composer.
Julian Philips is a British composer. Philips' works have been performed at major music festivals, including The Proms, Tanglewood, Three Choirs Festival, at the Wigmore Hall, South Bank Centre and Berlin Philharmonic Chamber Music Hall and by international artists such as Gerald Finley, Dawn Upshaw, Sir Thomas Allen, the Vertavo String Quartet, the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, the BBC orchestras and the Aurora Orchestra.
The Enchanted Pig is a chamber opera with music by Jonathan Dove to a libretto by Alasdair Middleton. It is based on themes from traditional fairy tales: "The Enchanted Pig", and "The Brown Bear of Norway".
