'The Hummingbird' from An Amherst Bestiary (1997)

British composer Emma-Ruth Richards is currently working on a new chamber opera for the Royal Opera House and other partners with award winning director Natalie Abrahami and librettist Nicola Chalmers. Recently she been commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, LSO Aftershock, Opera North, London Philharmonia, Håkan Hardenberger, Colin Currie, Nicholas Daniel, Paul Silverthorne, The Rhodes Piano Trio, Ebor Singers, Navarra Quartet, Dudok Quartet, Ligeti Quartet, Aurora Percussion Duo, BBCNOW Chamber Players, HM Royal Marines Windband, Camerata Pacifica, Manchester Camerata, and The Absolution Saxophone Quartet amongst others. 

Emma-Ruth's music has been performed all over the UK and Europe and in Hong Kong, New York, Pennsylvania and Florida. She is a Royal Northern Gold Medal composer and has featured in festivals including Music of Today 2009, James MacMillan 2009, RNCM Chamberfest 2011, Sounds New Canterbury 2010, HCMF 2011, Queen’s Belfast 2012, North West 2012, St. Magnus 2012, IC Hong Kong 2012, Internationaal Kamermuziekfestival Den Haag 2012, Banff 2012, Sound Scotland 2013, Aldeburgh 2014, ITG Pennsylvania 2014, NMC Florida 2014, York Spring Festival of New Music 2015 and Southbank Changing Britain 2015.

Emma-Ruth is a member of the LSO's composer soundhub and has been the composer in residence with Milton Keynes City Orchestra. She has studied with Alexander Goehr, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Oliver Knussen, Michael Gandolfi, Colin Matthews and Judith Weir and in seminars and workshops with Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Simon Bainbridge, Julian Anderson, James MacMillan, Frederic Rzewski, HK Gruber, Pavel Novak, Howard Skempton and in the Cardiff BBC Studios with Michael Berkley and Jac Van Steen; she completed her PhD at the RNCM in 2015 and is a member of the Chetham’s International Summer School Faculty.

Born in Wales in 1969 and brought up in Warwickshire, Julian Philips studied music at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is one of Britain’s most versatile composers. His music has been performed across the world at major festivals and venues including the BBC Proms, Tanglewood Music Festival, Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne and Wigmore Hall, by international artists including Gerald Finley, Dawn Upshaw, Sir Thomas Allen, the Vertavo String Quartet and BBC orchestras.
With a particular affinity for music for voice, Philips has been critically acclaimed for song settings of Emily Dickinson, e e cummings, Dylan Thomas and Langston Hughes among others, most recently a new cycle for baritone, cello and harp, Turning Fifty (2019) based on the poetry of Judith Wright. Love Songs for Mary Joyce (2016), commissioned by Wigmore Hall for tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Anna Tilbrook, sets a series of late love poems by John Clare. His choral music is similarly celebrated and is included in the Choirbook for the Queen (Church Music) as well as being commissioned for the BBC Proms (Sorrowfull Songes).
As Glyndebourne Opera’s first ever Composer-in-Residence, Philips completed two chamber operas in 2006-9: Followers, a site-specific promenade opera with a libretto by Simon Christmas, and The Yellow Sofa with a libretto by Edward Kemp, subsequently featured in Glyndebourne’s tour and shortlisted for a British Composer Award. The year-long development of Knight Crew was filmed by BBC Television and the resulting series, Gareth goes to Glyndebourne, aired in June 2010. Philips’ opera How the Whale Became, a collaboration with Edward Kemp, was based on Ted Hughes’s The Dreamfighter and other creation tales, and was written for the Royal Opera House’s Christmas 2013/14 season. His most recent full-length opera, The Tale of Januarie, was staged by the Guildhall School in Spring 2017, boasting perhaps the first libretto in Middle English by Stephen Plaice, and based on Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale. A new primary school children’s opera, Henny Penny (2021), offers its participants an immersive experience both in music and modern language learning, with versions in French (Cocotte Chocotte), German (Hennig Pfennig) and Spanish (Pollita Chiquita).
Ballet and opera are natural progressions for Philips, who already has an impressive track-record in composing for the theatre and has written two full-length ballets for choreographer Michael Corder and English National Ballet; a ballet based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses was followed by The Snow Queen in 2007. Symphonic works also form Philips’ oeuvre with All that remains commissioned to commemorate the centenary of the beginning of World War I receiving its world premiere by the National Orchestra of Belgium. Ballades Concertantes, for solo viola and double bass with chamber orchestra, premiered with Virginia Slater, Stacey Watton, and the Orchestra of the Swan in 2017, conducted by David Curtis.
A vital force in education, Philips is the Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he was made Honorary Fellow in 2007, and conferred a Professorship in 2014. He was responsible for the creation of both a new Masters Programme in Opera-Making & Writing and a Doctoral Composer-in-Residence scheme in association with the Royal Opera House.
Recent projects include a new oboe quintet, Through Silence (2020) for Wigmore Hall, and a set of folk song creative transcriptions, Melodys of Earth and Sky (2021), for violin and clarinet that draw on the two books of fiddle tunes collected by poet John Clare. The work was released on NMC Recordings in March 2022, reaching no 10 in the classical charts. In October 2022, The Country of Larks for tenor, horn and piano – a setting of Robert Louis Stevenson – receives its third performance at the Oxford Lieder Festival.
In August 2022, Julian Philips was featured composer at the Presteigne Festival, with six works featured including Barcarola for solo piano, Divertissement for chamber orchestra (based on his ballet score for Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and Looking West – a large-scale dramatic cantata for voices, actors and ensemble, (libretto by Rebecca Hurst), commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Other recent works include A Series of Strange Encounters for marimba and wind quintet, premiered by Evelyn Glennie at the Lake District Summer Music Festival in July 2023. Current projects include a series of John Clare settings for the vocal ensemble Exaudi and ongoing collaboration with the New London Chamber Ensemble, celebrating their 25th Anniversary, with a series of chamber works.

'The Hummingbird' from An Amherst Bestiary (1997)

Julian Philips Composer