ORA Singers' presents 13 world premieres at its first Composer Competition

ORA Singers, founder & artistic director Suzi Digby, has been a prolific commissioner of new music since the vocal ensemble's founding in 2016 and on Saturday 27 July 2019 at King's College, London they will extend this further with the final of the vocal ensemble's first composition competition.

The competition is in two parts, an Open Competion (open to all) and the Youth Competition (which is open only to secondary state-school pupils). At the final on Saturday, Suzi Digby will conduct ORA Singers in 13 new pieces, three finalists for the Open Competition, Joel Jarventausta, Áine Mallon and Ben See, and ten finalists for the Youth Competition. The results will be judged by a distinguished panel consisting of Stephen Fry, Susanna Eastburn (chief executive of Sound and Music), composer John Rutter and Katia Tearle (director of new music at Edition Peter).

The ten youth finalists were chosen to receive 10 hours of one-to-one mentoring each from ORA-commissioned composers, have their works workshopped with ORA singers and write a new work to be performed in the Competition Final Concert. ORA particularly wanted to target young people who it felt might not have the opportunity, either at school or at home, to receive support in writing music, and wanted to give them a platform to compose and have their music heard. The three Open Finalists and ten Youth Finalists have all been asked to write a reflection of a Renaissance choral masterpiece, something that ORA regularly asks of its commissioned composers.

Finalists:
OPEN COMPETITION
Joel Jarventausta
Áine Mallon
Ben See

YOUTH COMPETITION
Patrick Lappin (17, Lurgan College, Northern Ireland)
Hannah Beech (17, Loreto Sixth Form College, Denton)
Edward Atkin ( 15, Millthorpe School, York)
Emily Pedersen (17, St John Fisher Catholic High School, Harrogate)
Katie Styles (11, Wycombe Girl's High School, Maidenhead)
Louis Wild (17, Prudhoe Community High School, Wylam)
Laura Fitzgerald (17, Kesgrave High School Sixth Form, Kesgrave)
Joshua Wheldon (17, North Hykeham Joint, Sixth Form College, Thurlby)
Ben Gilchrist (15, Pate's Grammar School, Cheltenham)
Yuvraj Sethia (17, The Priory Academy LSST)

Full details from the ORA Singers website.