Tom Coult is a composer born in London in 1988. His playful and seductive music has been championed by many of the UK’s major orchestras and ensembles, and in 2021 he was made Composer-in-Association with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. 

His first opera, Violet, with text by Alice Birch, was premiered in 2022 at the Aldeburgh Festival and on tour, and was described by The Telegraph as ‘the best new British opera in years‘. It has already been staged in second and third productions in Paris and Ulm, Germany, in 2022 and 2023. It has won or been nominated for: an International Opera Award, a South Bank Sky Arts Award, a Critics Circle Award, an IVORS Composer Award and a UK Theatre Award.

His large-scale pieces have included Pleasure Garden, a concerto that violinist Daniel Pioro has performed with the BBC Philharmonic and London Philharmonic Orchestras, Beautiful Caged Thing for soprano Claire Booth and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and St John’s Dance (premiered by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra to open the First Night of the 2017 BBC Proms).

He has enjoyed further associations with ensembles such as Britten Sinfonia and London Sinfonietta (who premiered Spirit of the Staircase, nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award), and has been Composer-in-Residence at Aldeburgh Festival, Switzerland’s Musikdorf Ernen Festival, and Oxford Lieder Festival.

His music has been described as ‘funny and surreal and delicately poetic, all at once’ (The Telegraph), and ‘methodically crafted yet bewitchingly original’ (The Guardian) – ‘Coult is a composer who spins glittering, teasingly ambiguous patterns out of simple-seeming material…a very individual voice’ (The Telegraph).

Further performances have come from Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of Opera North, Scottish Ensemble, and Manchester Camerata, while chamber works have earned performances by ensembles including Arditti Quartet, Quatuor Diotima, Psappha, Fidelio Trio, Riot Ensemble, Trondheim Soloists and soloists from the Philharmonia. 

Tom studied at the University of Manchester with Camden Reeves and Philip Grange and at King’s College London with George Benjamin. Between 2017 and 2019 he was Visiting Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge, and has taught on the Britten Sinfonia Academy composition course and with Aldeburgh Young Musicians. Awards include a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists, the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Prize, Critics’ Circle Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize.