The young British composer Charlotte Bray’s music is exhilarating and vivid, with a richly expressive lyrical intensity. She draws inspiration from her surroundings, including human encounters and political events. Poetry, visual art, and nature also serve as impulses for her creative work.
Charlotte Bray studied with Mark Anthony Turnage at the Royal College of Music after taking composition classes with Joe Cutler at Birmingham College of Music, where she’d initially enrolled as a cellist. She further honed her compositional craft in masterclasses with Oliver Knussen, Magnus Lindberg, and Augusta Read-Thomas, among others.
She now works with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Scottish and BBC Symphony Orchestras, and with ensembles such as London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Renowned conductors have performed her work including Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Sakari Oramo, Daniel Harding and Jessica Cottis. Her compositions have been performed at the BBC Proms and at festivals in Aldeburgh, Tanglewood, Aix-en-Provence, and Verbier.
The previous seasons marked a very productive phase for Charlotte Bray and saw several world premieres: The Certainty of Tides for cellist Natalie Clein and the Aurora Chamber Orchestra (December 2019); Red Swans Floating, with notabu.ensemble and Spectra Ensemble at Tonhalle Düsseldorf (June 2019); Bring Me All Your Dreams, a solo piece for Pierre-Laurent Aimard at Aldeburgh Festival (June 2019); and the triple concerto Germinate, with the Sitkovetsky Trio and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Pierre-André Valade (May 2019). Reflections in Time was premiered by the London Sinfonietta in May 2018, Mid-Oceaned (for viola and cello) by Ralf Ehlers and Lucas Fels of the Arditti Quartet, also in May 2018, and the viola solo In Black Light was written for Tabea Zimmerman and premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July of that same year.
2021 begins with the premiere of a new orchestral work at the Winter International Arts Festival in Sochi, performed by the Youth Symphony Orchestra or Russia under Yuri Bashmet. A miniature symphony created for the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the direction of chief conductor Cristian Macelaru will also be heard later in the season.
Charlotte Bray’s second recording, a disc of chamber works released in 2018 on the Richard Thomas Classical label, was recorded at the Sendesaal in Bremen, Germany, featuring the Amaryllis Quartet, the Mariani Piano Quartet, and the pianist Huw Watkins, with support from the PRS Foundation’s Composer Fund. Her debut recording, At the Speed of Stillness, was released in 2014 on NMC Records.
Charlotte Bray has been honoured and recognized with numerous scholarships and awards, including the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize (2010), the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Prize, and the Critics' Circle Award (both 2014). She has been a Composer-in-Residence at the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Oxford Song Festival, Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival, MacDowell Colony, Liguria Study Center, and Aldeburgh Music. In the winter semester 2016/17 she was guest professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona.
2020/21 Season
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