ORA Singers’ Graduate Composers‘ scheme forms a core part of their Composers’ Pathway – their work to support composers at any stage in their careers. The Graduate scheme champions early-career composers by offering them a professional commission with ORA Singers and regular mentorship with Artistic Director, Suzi Digby.
The third Graduate Composers’ scheme culminates in a Graduate Composers Showcase at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama on 2 October 2026. The five Graduate Composers – Evie Atkin, Eluned Davies, Marcello Palazzo, Sarah Henderson, and Harry Rees – have been set the task of ‘reflecting’ a renaissance original, in line with many of ORA Singers other commissions featured in their 100 Commissions Catalogue. The Showcase will see ORA Singers premiere each new work alongside its renaissance counterpart at the Dora Stoutzker Hall at the Royal Welsh College.
- Evie Atkin is a composer, musical director, and performer based in London. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Julian Phillips, Laurence Crane and Hollie Harding
- Sarah Henderson is a freelance composer, cellist and soprano based in London. Her formal training in composition began at the Junior Department of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and she later studied with Masahiro Ishijima when she was a student at Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo
- Marcello Palazzo is completing a doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music, and graduated the University of Oxford (MPhil, Composition). He has written music for the London Symphony Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Allen, CHROMA Ensemble, Ligeti Quartet, Merton College Choir (Oxford), Britten-Pears Contemporary Ensemble
- Eluned Davies is a Welsh composer currently based in London, with a background in singing as well as a passion for poetry and words. She is currently completing her MA in Opera Making at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama as Jane Ades scholar, under the tutelage of Julian Philips. Davies also studied with Laurence Crane and Paul Newland in her MMus in Guildhall and with Jonathan Cole and Catherine Kontz in her undergraduate studies at the Royal College of Music
- Harry Rees is an emerging Irish composer from Enniskillen. They graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2025 studying under Ceri Tippetts, Mark Boden, Michael McCartney, Owen Lloyd, and Tic Ashfield. In 2024, Harry was shortlisted by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for Composition: Wales 2025, culminating in March 2025 with a recorded performance by the orchestra of Harry’s original work, Nine Times to Die, conducted by Jac van Steen.
Full details of the Graduate Showcase from the RWCMD website.
