We are delighted to announce that this year’s holders of the King's College/Hartley Rogers CBSO Scholarships in Orchestral Composition will be Georgia Denham and Glen Downie, both currently studying on the Composition PhD programme at Cambridge.
Established in 2017, the King's College/Hartley Rogers CBSO Scholarships allow Cambridge students – regardless of College affiliation – to compose a new work for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and to hear it rehearsed and professionally recorded in two separate workshops. This programme is the result of an exciting partnership between King's, the University of Cambridge Music Faculty and the world-renowned CBSO, and made possible through a visionary donation.
This year’s Scholars are currently writing pieces to be workshopped by a full orchestra in Birmingham in November this year and then in July 2025. Both workshops will be recorded in their entirety, enabling composers to go back and review a comprehensive record of how various aspects of the piece worked, and revisit comments made in rehearsal by the players and conductor. At the end of the project, the Scholars will come away with a recording of professional quality which can be edited into a complete performance for their own use.
Georgia Denham (Christ’s College) draws on a love of visual arts and anecdotal experience to create her music. She previously studied with Andrew Hamilton at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, where she was awarded the Conservatoire Undergraduate Prize. In 2020, her piece for violin and piano, kindly, softly, was nominated for an Ivor Composer Award. Released in July 2024, her debut album with love was named in The Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, July 2024, described as "poignant sonic gift" (Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily).
Georgia is currently a PhD student at the University of Cambridge with Richard Causton, as a Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholar.
Glen Downie (Clare Hall) is an instrumental and vocal composer originally from Aotearoa New Zealand, where he previously studied at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music with Michael Norris. He’s currently studying towards a PhD with Jeremy Thurlow at the University of Cambridge, on a Cambridge Trust International Scholarship.
Glen has been the young composer representative for New Zealand at the 2022 (postponed from 2020) Asian Composers League festival and held the NZSO-National Youth Orchestra composer in residence (2019). He has also participated in selective international workshops such as the 2017 Tactus Young Composers’ Forum with the Brussels Philharmonic and Ensemble Musiques Nouvelle (Mons), and also engages in free and group improvisation as saxophonist.
He has been commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand, Stroma, The New Zealand Harp Duo and the Intrepid Music Project, and co-directed Wellington’s SMP Ensemble from 2014 to 2023.
