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PGCR 2024: Our eighth cohort

PGCR 2024: Our eighth cohort

The Picture Gallery Composer-in-Residence Scheme is a ground-breaking residency in which successful student composers from the Department of Music will have their musical responses to the Picture Gallery and some of its wonderful paintings performed by an invited ensemble each year.

This residency is a professional development programme for music creators of the Department of Music to receive specialist, industry-standard workshop sessions and tutorials, working collaboratively with invited artists, ensembles and tutors to create new works that are premiered as part of the International Concert Series. 

These new compositions are the result of a special collaboration between the College’s Arts Collection Teams and Dr Nathan James Dearden, Lecturer in Music Composition at the Department of Music.

Project overview for 2024

Now in its eighth year, our six sound artists/composers/music creators, from across a range of genres, are creating music through a collaborative and immersive professional development programme exploring the relationship between live, recorded sound, DAW-produced music, and Royal Holloway's art collection. 

This year, the selected music creators are tasked to create a short work for choir and electronics inspired by our Picture Gallery and its collection. These new works will be workshopped and performed by the Choir of Royal Holloway and their Director Rupert Gough

Each successful applicant also receives support and guidance from Lecturer in Music Composition, Nathan James Dearden, through a mixture of one-to-one mentoring sessions and catered professional development sessions. Each selected music creator will also receive mentoring sessions from composer, sound designer, and Research Scholar, Thomas Baynes.

Our eighth cohort

Ben Blakeborough is an innovative and versatile composer currently pursuing his undergraduate studies at Royal Holloway University. His compositional style is characterized by a fusion of contemporary concert music and electronic soundscapes, often creating unique and immersive sonic environments.

Ben has been involved in a variety of collaborative and developmental projects, working closely with ensembles and musicians. Notably, he has participated in workshops with groups such as the Tippett Quartet, Chroma, and Riot Ensemble, where he has honed his skills in writing for string quartets, large ensembles, and other chamber music groups. His music has been performed internationally, with one of his standout works being the solo piano piece "Lotus Flower," which was showcased at the Slot Zuylen Castle in the Netherlands. In addition to his concert music, Ben has ventured into the world of media composition, most recently composing the soundtrack for the video game Eggstraction, developed by the indie studio Two Shoed Games.

Beyond his work as a composer, Ben has a deep interest in global music traditions. He has studied a wide range of musical styles, with particular emphasis on traditional Andean music. His passion for this genre led him to collaborate and perform with Sikuris sin Fronteras, a London-based group dedicated to preserving and promoting Andean music and culture. Through these collaborations, Ben has opened himself to new creative possibilities through this exposure to diverse rhythms, timbre and musical structure. He takes this into his own work to explore fresh approaches to composition. Looking ahead to 2025, Ben will take on the role of leader and co-director of the Andean Band at Royal Holloway University of London. Under the mentorship of Prof. Henry Stobart, a leading expert on Andean music.

Parmida Eslaminazari is an Iranian composer and musician who started her academic journey in Tehran. She attended private piano classes from age ten and joined the Gozar Academy in
Tehran, where she attended weekly piano and music theory lessons. Inspired by her dream, she moved to London and completed the International Foundation Programme in Music at DLD College London in 2021. In 2024, she graduated with a Bachelor of Music from Royal Holloway University of London, focusing on composition.

Throughout her undergraduate studies, Parmida composed various pieces for different ensembles, establishing a unique voice that blends traditional Persian harmonic techniques with her evolving sound world. Her compositional approach aims to bridge classical Persian music with contemporary methods, creating music that reflects her cultural heritage and personal
expression, including her three-movement piece Dialogues, Trombone Miniature, chamber orchestra piece Sounds of Tehran and Mirror Hall. Parmida also participated in a "Game Jam"
competition in May 2024, where teams collaborated to build a video game over a week.

As she begins her postgraduate studies, Parmida continues to explore the relationship between Persian music and modern composition, constantly striving to improve her skills. The Game Jam opportunity inspired her to take the Media and Commercial Composition module, where she composed underscore music for two radio dramas and a video game. As one of the six
participants in the 2024–2025 Picture Gallery Composer-in Residence Scheme, Parmida will collaborate with the Choir of Royal Holloway to compose a piece for choir and electronics in response to the Picture Gallery and art collection.

Joseph is a London-based composer and current postgraduate student in Music Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London. His work blends facets of contemporary classical, electroacoustic, folk and popular music, reflecting his exploration of tensions—both personal and cultural—through his concert music and media compositions.

Joseph studied at the University of Birmingham, under electroacoustic composers Jonty Harrison and Annie Mahtani, and contemporary classical composers Daria Kwiatkowska and Vic Hoyland. His chamber ensemble piece Artifice, performed by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, received the COMPASS prize upon his graduation. He has also composed music for animated online media, the art installation Legless Birds of Paradise by artist and gallery director Anna Domejko, and audio dramas created by Royal Holloway undergraduate drama students, under Tom Parkinson’s supervision.

Recently, Joseph has been selected as a picture gallery composer-in-residence, composing a piece for both choir and electronics inspired by John Callcott Horsley’s The Banker’s Private Room, Negotiating a Loan. He is also working on Oubliette, a piece for soprano and double bass, which has been workshopped by members of the Hermes Experiment, under supervision of Nina Whiteman and Tonia Ko, and a string orchestra piece in collaboration with Royal Holloway’s New Music Collective, guided by Nathan James Dearden.

Outside of composing, Joseph has worked as a festival coordinator for the Leicester International Music Festival, currently under the artistic direction of Nicholas Daniel OBE. This role echoes his compositional approach, in that it enabled him to further fulfil his passion for bringing music to a wide range of listeners and communities.

Harvey is currently a final year Music and English student at Royal Holloway. Known for his “wide-ranging approaches to [musical] texture”, his works have been favorably reviewed as “highly creative and expressive”. His compositions have been workshopped by various ensembles, such as the Tippett Quartet, CHROMA Ensemble, Polaris Duo, and Trio Atem. In particular, his choral work ‘In Flanders Fields’ won the 2022 Royal Holloway Composition Competition and was subsequently premiered by Rupert Gough and The Choir of Royal Holloway.

Harvey is also an avid conductor with a keen interest in exploring the relationship between music and literature. He is currently the Senior Assistant Conductor of Royal Holloway Symphony Orchestra and the co-founder and director of vocal ensemble Hemiola. He has also worked extensively with multiple choirs, including The Choir of Royal Holloway, The Illumino Singers, Royal Holloway New Voices Consort, and the Hong Kong Children’s Choir.

Sequoia Ralph is an Anglo-Irish composer and musician from London. His main interests concern the music of opera and video games. His works explore the relationship between music and narrative, and reference numerous genres, from classical romanticism to international folk melodies.

Sequoia was introduced to music from an early age through his engagement with musical therapy. This was supported through supplemental piano lessons with composer and pianist Marcello Palace. However, it was not until he was thirteen years old when Sequoia began to compose himself. Since then, he has studied with Nathan James Dearden, amongst other composers.

His music has been performed by the West London Free School Symphony Orchestra; The ORA singers; The Royal Holloway New Music Collective; and the Royal Holloway Conductor’s Collective. His music also features in the play An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by Julia Pascal, which was performed as part of the Bloomsbury Festival. His music has also been workshopped by pianist Oliver Cuttriss, as part of the Musicfest Aberystwyth, and has been recorded by Chalkstream Productions.

Outside of composition, Sequoia holds a diploma (DipABRSM) in Piano Performance from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and frequently assists the music department at Royal Holloway as an accompanist. Sequoia also holds a tenor choral scholarship in the Choirs of Royal Holloway and St Bartholomew the Great.

Sophia Wilhelmi is a composer working across contemporary classical, hybrid, and media music. She blurs the boundaries between composition and post-production, incorporating live recordings into the creative process.

Current projects include a recorded performance for a medium ensemble, mixing free-time and metered composition within the Omnidrome drone building at Royal Holloway, and a short piece for traditional chamber orchestra.

Sophia has composed for various media including short film, animation, podcast, and surround-sound installation. In addition to composing titles in film, she has also been credited as Sound Designer, Production Sound Engineer, and Head of Music.

She is in her final year of the Music and Sound Design for Film, Television, and Interactive Media course. In 2017, Sophia graduated with a minor in sound design (and a bachelor’s in computational neuroscience) at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. She has since moved to the United Kingdom to pivot to a full-time career in the music industry.

She is currently involved in multiple ensembles at Royal Holloway, as a percussionist in the Symphony Orchestra, Wind Orchestra, and Conductor’s Collective, as well as a trumpeter in the Brass Band. Last year, she made new arrangements for classic jazz works, as the pianist of the jazz quartet, Sheer Audacity.

Sophia has been the event technical staff or front-of-house manager for numerous concerts within the International Concert Series since 2022. She frequently works as a sound engineer in professional-grade studios and on location for acoustic and live performance recordings, and a live mix engineer for musicals and musical performances.

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