Composition Summer Course for Ages 21+

Course Dates & Times

Monday 14 – Friday 18 July 2025
9.30am–5.30pm 

About Composition Summer Course for Ages 14–21

This new five-day composition course is a unique opportunity for composers to develop their composition skills and write a contemporary solo piece for specific instrumentalists. 

You will work with a composition tutor and two leading contemporary music performers (clarinet and piano) on your own music and learn how to develop your ideas in collaboration with performers with guidance from your composition tutor.

Who is the course for?

Composers aged 21 and over.

What can I expect?

During the week you will:

• Participate in group composition classes, where you will explore aspects of technique, notation, instrumental writing and how to work with your ideas
• Receive one-to-one composition tuition
• Work with professional instrumentalists to try out ideas and develop material
• Write a solo piece throughout the week
• Hear your piece workshopped and performed in an end-of-course showcase
• Receive a mastered audio recording of your piece

Do I need anything for the course?

• If possible, please bring a laptop with music notation software (e.g. Sibelius/MuseScore/Dorico) installed.

How to Apply

Click the ‘apply now’ button and complete the application form, which consists of the following:

• Write 250 words outlining your composition experience and what you hope to gain from the course
• Please state your preference as to whether you would like to write for piano or clarinet or if you have no preference and your reasons why. There is a fixed and limited number of spaces to work with each instrumentalist.
• Upload a portfolio of two completed compositions. These can be in any style but both compositions should be fully notated. Your portfolio should be submitted as a PDF file – the music can be either handwritten and scanned, or notated using computer software. You may also submit audio files, but these are not essential.

Course Fee

£675

Public booking opens at 11am, Thursday 28 November. Join our mailing list before Monday 25 November to receive priority booking.

Eligibility

• For everyone aged 14–21
• Some prior experience with composition (as listed above)
• Participants must have sufficient English language skills in order to fully engage with the course 

About the Course Tutor

The course is taught by Hollie Harding, Richard Baker, Heather Roche and Ben Smith. 

Hollie Harding is Associate Head of Composition at the GSMD. She has 12 years of composition teaching experience in higher education at all levels, and is passionate about creating engaging spaces and opportunities for contemporary music making. As an active composer, her work has been performed and broadcast internationally and released by NMC Recordings. She has worked with BCMG, London Symphony Orchestra (Jerwood Composer Plus), Philharmonia Orchestra (Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize), London Philharmonic Orchestra (Leverhulme Young Composer Programme), Sjøforsvarets Musikkorps (Norwegian Navy Band), Amy Jolly, Alwynne Pritchard, CHROMA ensemble, Castallian String Quartet, Ensemble Via Nova (Weimar) and DeciBells (Basel) among others. She is interested in exploring at different ways of constructing the spaces of musical performances and exploring the impact this has on composition processes and the listening experience. 

Composer, conductor, teacher and mentor, Richard Baker studied composition in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen and in London with John Woolrich, after which the position of New Music Fellow at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2001–3) inaugurated a strand of work as a concert curator and programme adviser which continues to this day. He has been a Professor of Composition at Guildhall School since 2004. His compositional output embraces songs and song cycles, several short choral pieces, instrumental solos and chamber music as well as works for larger ensemble. Key works include the basset clarinet concerto Learning to Fly (1999); Gaming (2010), a trio for cello, marimba and piano; Kerdantata (2015) for piano trio, for the Fidelio Trio; and several works for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, with whom he has also worked often as a conductor. The Tyranny of Fun (2012), the second of those BCMG commissions, won Baker a nomination in the 2014 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. Baker’s first piece for full orchestra, The Price of Curiosity (2019), commissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, is the first in an ongoing series of works which juxtapose instrumental ‘transcriptions’ of human speech against transcriptions of musical material that is in some way related to it; these also include Motet II (2020) and Motet IV (Accidental Activists) (2023), composed respectively for the Marseille-based Ensemble Télémaque and the Welsh new-music ensemble UPROAR.

Referred to as “The Queen of Extended Techniques” on BBC Radio 3, Heather Roche is one of the world’s foremost new music clarinetists and pedagogues. She performs in a duo with accordionist Eva Zöllner since 2017, and has performed with Apartment House, Riot Ensemble, Red Note Ensemble, the LSO, Musikfabrik, manufaktur für aktuelle music and more. She has solo CDs on NMC and Métier, and records regularly for Another Timbre, currently appearing on over 30 CDs on the label. She is the new clarinet tutor for the Darmstadt Summer Courses, and Head of Clarinet at tonebase.

Ben Smith a London-based composer and performer specialising in contemporary and experimental music. Hailed as one of “the finest new-music pianists in London” (Tempo) and a player of “extraordinary precision and insight” (The Guardian), he is in demand both as a soloist and chamber performer (An Assembly, Apartment House, Athelas Sinfonietta, Explore Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Riot Ensemble, Uproar Ensemble)". Ben has performed and collaborated on numerous world premieres and regularly works with composers in professional and educational contexts to support them to develop new repertoire for the piano.