Dame Judith Weir CBE HonFGS meets competition finalists

28 February 2025

Dame Judith Weir sits in front of a black grand piano talking in a classroom. In the foreground there is the shoulder of a young boy in a grey jumper

An experience of a lifetime for three Guildhall Young Artists

On Saturday 8 February, composer Dame Judith Weir CBE HonFGS, Master of the Queen’s music 2014 to 2024, gave her time to meet three of our Guildhall Young Artists in an inspiring workshop.

Three young students sit in a classroom and to the left Dame Judith Weir stands talking to them

Isaac, Charlotte and Zach were finalists of our RELEASE 2024 competition, which Dame Judith had adjudicated. The competition took place last year to encourage Guildhall Young Artist students to compose diverse, new work for different ensembles.

At this special workshop, Dame Judith worked with Isaac, Charlotte and Zach on their competition pieces, discussing and providing her thoughts on their work. She shared experiences from her own career and gave advice on orchestration supporting our ambitious young musicians to move forward in their musical journeys.

Listen to their compositions:

Carnelian, by Charlotte
Divertimento, by Isaac
Amethyst, by Zach

Having adjudicated RELEASE 2024, I was very interested to meet the three Prize Winners and to find out a little more about their scores. We did this in a live class, run by Jeffery Wilson, where we had really quite a lot of time to discuss these three compositions.

I found it really interesting. They were from three very separate musical walks of life; one piece for Jazz Ensemble, one full Orchestral composition, and one for String Ensemble. There were a many great things to discuss because those are all very different disciplines.

I find the students just so talented and therefore, so open to discussion. It’s never a question of criticising anything in the score. They’ve already done that self-criticism themselves, so I felt it was a discussion at a very mature and interesting level.