Cherubim Strings Composition Competition 2025 – Winner Announced
The Cherubim Music Trust is delighted to announce the winner of the 2025 Cherubim Composition Competition, established to discover a new work for the Cherubim Chamber Strings to premiere at their concert on Sunday 2 November 2025 in Tisbury.
Following a strong field of entries submitted before the August deadline, the panel — comprising conductor Arturo Serna and Trust Director Michael Maxwell Steer — carefully reviewed each composition with great interest. The Trust warmly thanks every composer who entered for their creativity and commitment.
After much consideration, the judges have awarded First Prize to Isaac Schaad for his work Subtle Shifts. They praised the piece for its mature invention and assured grasp of string writing, and expressed their enthusiasm to bring it to life in performance.
Isaac is currently a student at Norwich School, where he is preparing for his GCSEs, and he also studies at Junior Guildhall. A violinist since the age of three, he was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral, where the choir performed his composition Drop, Drop, Slow Tears. He has already been recognised with awards in both choral and instrumental composition at his school, as well as the Centenary Composition Competition at the Norfolk County Music Festival. In 2024, he was awarded first prize in a Junior Guildhall composition competition, judged by Master of the King’s Music Dame Judith Weir.
The Cherubim Music Trust congratulates Isaac on his success and looks forward to presenting the world premiere of Subtle Shifts with the Cherubim Chamber Strings, conducted by Arturo Serna, at our Tisbury concert this November.
Highly commended
We would like to congratulate several other outstanding entries.
Katie Styles’ Momentum was noteworthy for its energy and original use of harmony.
Katie is an 18-year-old composer and violinist in her first year at Cambridge University. Her works have been performed by the Ora Singers and as part of BBC Young Composer. She leads The Scroll Collective quartet.
Isabelle Ryder’s Elemental Rhapsody is in an exciting contemporary idiom which offers skill-stretching challenges.
Isabelle Ryder is an award-winning classical and jazz composer whose unusual creative voice draws on her former profession as an earthquake scientist – some whose sights and sounds she has sought to re-imagine in music. Isabelle is published by OUP, and in 2023 won the international Fidelio Piano Composition Competition. She teaches keyboards at LIPA and plays with the Wirral jazz collective Night Shift.
Worthy Challengers
One of the delights of judging this competition has been the variety and diversity of the entries and entrants.
When we announced this, our first, competition we had no idea what to expect or how much attention it would receive; and therefore were not in a position to issue any kind of brief or guidelines. We are honoured that so many composers have sent us so many varied examples of their originality. The art of art music is not dead: it is vividly alive and flourishing in many corners of the British Isles. We are therefore listing alphabetically all those who entered, and invite you to examine their work.
Aidan Porter In Xanadu
Aidan Porter is a writer /composer /actor based in Kingston upon Thames. He graduated with first-class honours in composition from the RWCMD in 2023. His current project, a play with songs, retells Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
Alexandra Skevington There May Be Tears
Alexandra Skevington is an English composer writing in a number of styles for a variety of instruments and purposes. Her music generally tells a melodic story with nods to jazz, French impressionism and house music. She creates accessible and enjoyable works for people of all ages, backgrounds and skills to play and listen to.
Anna Fox timepiece
Anna Fox is a composer of contemporary classical music based in Exeter, UK. Her work is inspired by nature and landscapes, as well as expressive texts and scientific concepts. Anna’s music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and performed at concerts and festivals across the UK including the Three Choirs Festival
Chris Williams Music for Ariel
Chris Williams is a composer, pianist, conductor and MD recently returned to Devon after 18 years in India. Works range from prize-winning music theatre, published choral and children’s music to music written for differing communities and abilities.
Christine Zhou A Dance For The Bridestones
Christine Zhou is a pianist, composer and filmmaker. She completed degrees at Montreal’s Concordia University; later proceeding to a Masters in Music Composition for Film at Bristol University. She has recently finished her first artist residency at Opera North.
Crystal D’Esprit My Homelands
Crystal D’Esprit is a classically trained flautist and pianist composing orchestral scores for films and games, inspired by Japanese composers and the legendary Ennio Morricone. She was awarded Emerging Composer at the 2023 Apulia Soundtrack Awards.
David Bentley On Time
David Bentley studied at Sheffield University, completing a PhD in composition at King’s College, London. His music has been performed by RSNO, Lontano, and The Britten Sinfonia. His Clarinet Sonata won the Rosalie Coopman Composition Competition in 2025. David has been Director of Music at several London schools.
David Perkins The Vanishing Horizon
David Perkins is a composer, arranger and accompanist for three choirs, including the prison charity, Liberty Choir. He teaches at London College of Music, and was for 25 years musical director of Yvonne Arnaud Youth Theatre, composing over 20 musicals which have been published and performed on every continent, except Antarctica!
Edward Tait Passage of Time
Edward Tait is an emerging British composer studying at the RAM. Their music has received performances by award-winning ensembles like the London Sinfonietta, Carducci Quartet and Orion Orchestra at the RFH, St John’s Smith Square, and Westminster Abbey.
Ellis Adjei Fantasia
Ellis Adjei is on a full music scholarship at Stowe School, where he received the Vane-Tempest Music Cup for one of his compositions. He also enters the Junior RCM in 2025 on a full scholarship.
Ethan Cumberbatch One Life for a Thousand
Ethan Cumberbatch is a 13 year old Cambridge musician. Alongside composing, he plays cello, piano, recorder and organ. His aim is to unlock a vast range of emotions within people, From hope to heartbreak, longing and joy – there’s a place for all of them in my music.
Eugene Wu The Circus of Westminster
Ewa Ademiec Violet Carnations
Ewa Adamiec is a visionary music composer who creates sonic fusions by interlacing cultural connections, drawing from a rich tapestry of global influences which transcend genre. She performs on sitar, guitar, percussion and violin.
Gerard Sean Coutain Music for Double String Orchestra
Gerard Coutain is a 17-year-old Polish-born composer living in Wales. He began composing in 2022 and in 2024 won the Urdd Eisteddfod’s Composers’ Medal. He is currently at the Purcell School where he studies composition, piano and violin.
www.instagram.com/gerdmusic?igsh=enk0MGc2NWx2aDUw&utm_source=qr
Graham N Harris Vivat
Greg Harradine Rhapsody for John Shade
Greg Harradine is a composer based in the Scottish Borders. Recent commissions include Flux Alluvia, a string sextet; Caledonian Portraits, 8 art-inspired works for solo piano; Incandenza Variations, written for the K3A Orchestra.
Helen Roe Anitigone’s Passion
Helen Roe is a composer and violist. She has worked with the BBC Singers, English Northern Philharmonia, Onyx Brass and Quatuor Lontano. After years of meeting commission deadlines, she has returned to composing for herself.
Hugh Collins Rice Fantasia on Nox et Tenebrae
Jonathan Brigg Neon Dreams
Jonathan Brigg studied music at the University of Manchester and a doctoral study in composition at York as a Sir Jack Lyons Research Scholar. He was an inaugural composer on Britten Sinfonia’s Magnum Opus scheme, and recently a finalist in the V International Uuno Klami Competition in Finland.
Jonathan Little Celestial City
Katrin Gilbert Rondo a la zoom with interlude
Katrin Gilbert studied viola in Boston and California and performed with many famous American and European orchestras. She now lives, plays and teaches in England. Katrin has arranged three books of duets and is presently composing for viola and piano.
Kye Perry An Advocate Of Dandelion
Kye Perry studied composition at Reid School of Music and HKU in Utrecht, developing a style that plays with the listeners’ perception of temporal dimensions. Recent work focuses on string and vocal ensembles in a contemporary exploration of layering textures, experimental dissonance & microtonality.
Louisa Lyne The vodka tree
Lou Lyne is on the non-classical scene in Oxford, mainly as cellist in the Brickwork Lizards fusing Arabic music with hip hop, gypsy, and jazz. Among many exciting projects are Oxford Maqam’s Arabic Tango and touring with Saint Etienne.
Megan Harrison Earl Grey Tea Rhapsody
Megan Harrison is a composer, conductor, flautist and saxophonist who studied at Southampton University. She creates soundtracks for games and teaches sax as well as doing publicity for Turner Sims concert hall. Megan was a winner of the 2025 Southampton University String Orchestra Composition Competition.
Phil Baker Bayeux Overture
Phil Baker writes in a range of genres and form. His particular interest is theatre music, having composed ‘Gulliver’ for the Hawth Theatre, ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ for Herstmonceux Medieval Festival and a two-act opera ‘The Bayeux Tapestry’. He studied under Edmund Rubbra and later took an M. Phil in composition at Royal Holloway.
Raymond Kohn Concertino
Ray Kohn cannot remember when he was not composing or telling stories. He launched the Sheffield Music Festival where he introduced 40 living composers over 8 years and he continues to mentor and help many emerging artists. His own music is published by Mozart Edition and his entertaining short stories are available on his website.
Samuele Degl’Innocenti The Last Day of a Condemned Man
Samuele Degl’Innocenti is an Italian pianist, composer and arranger studying Music at Edinburgh Napier University. Classically trained, his musical ranges covers the spectrum. He teaches piano at the Edinburgh School of Music.
William Blake Enda Amongst The Fairies
William Blake is a multi-instrumentalist and teacher who plays double bass with the Hull Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been composing for many years and recently the HPO gave the premiere of his ballet music The Song of Othoon.
William Southworth Where Sleep Overflows from the Heart
William Southworth studied composition at Coventry University. After the premiere of his Underside & Vortex in 2015, he pursued a career as a heavy metal guitarist, later returning to Birmingham and forming the band Lunar Mercia which has a second album due out in late 2025. Last winter William began composing in a contemporary classical idiom once more and by this summer had completed several new works for choir and orchestra.
