Commissions for New Music Biennial Festival revealed

PRS Foundation, Southbank Centre and Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture have revealed commissions for this year’s New Music Biennial Festival. The festival, which is free to attend, will run from 6-8 June 2025 in Bradford as part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and from 4-6 July 2025 at London’s Southbank Centre.

The 2025 festival will feature 20 brand new works selected through an open call alongside new pieces premiered within the last four years. Presented in partnership with BBC Radio 3 and NMC Recordings with support from Arts Council England, the festival also forms part of PRS Foundation’s 25th Anniversary celebrations, featuring a PRS Foundation a work supported by the foundation’s Beyond Borders initiative that supports touring new works across UK nations and Ireland.

Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture director of programme Jenny Harris said: ‘The composers and musicians that will be performing at New Music Biennial have responded beautifully to the context in which this year's festival is set, with northern voices and sensibility reflected throughout. There's a huge variety of music genre reflected; from jazz, R&B and folk to contemporary classical, sound installations and electronica, all taking over our district's incredible venues. Audiences can come with open ears and take a risk on something they've not experienced before, or immerse themselves in music they love – it's a real opportunity to be curious.’

Established in 2012 as New Music 20x12 for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, the New Music Biennial has previously featured creators including Anna Meredith, Hannah Peel, Errollyn Wallen and Mark-Anthony Turnage. This year’s festival is set to include performances from the BBC Concert and BBC Symphony Orchestras, Maxwell Quartet, Onyx Brass, CoMA, Zubin Kanga, Ensemble 1604, The Carice Singers and Sinfonia Cymru. Performances will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show with recordings available through NMC Recordings.

New works set to feature at the 2025 New Music Biennial include:

• Dhamaal – Core –Commissioned by Serious Trust written by Indian-born British composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, Shri Sriram
• P E A C E – Commissioned by Manchester Jazz Festival, devised by sound artist and audio producer, Verity Watts as lead composer curating a team including Kenzo Jae, Scout Bolton, Dave Kane, DJ Woody. 
• Bantam’s Drift – Commissioned by Brighter Sound, written by audiovisual artist and DJ m3UNTITLED, and experimental duo GOMID (Nigerian-British vocalist Iyunoluwanimi Yemi-Shodimu and British producer Samuel Scott). 
• Moth x Human – Commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music, written by violinist, composer and creative director Ellie Wilson, supported by UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)
• Mercury Songs – Commissioned by Spitalfields Music, written by performer-composer Emily Levy and musician Matthew Bourne.
• Requiem – Commissioned by Paraorchestra, written by Rylan Gleave (under the moniker All Men Unto Me).
• Chasing Sunlight – Commissioned by Sinfonia Cymru, written by British composer, music director and producer, Mark David Boden
• GLOW – Commissioned by Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, written by performer, composer and educator, Xenia Pestova-Bennett
• Holocene – Commissioned by Onyx Brass written by Irish composer and writer, Ailís Ní Ríain.
• In Conversation: N'dehou – Commissioned by The Carice Singers, composed by British composer, Daniel Kidane.
• MARCH – Commissioned by Contemporary Music for All (CoMA), written by Jerusalemite composer and theatre-maker Uri Agnon
• Threads of Sound: A Woollen Heritage – Commissioned by The Night With... written by composer and singer Stef Conner

Additional new pieces written by Halina Rice and Jasdeep Singh Degun will be performed by BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra, and a new R&B piece written by Shae Universe and commissioned by The Blues Project. Existing new works by Alex Groves, Dali de Saint Paul, Maxwell Sterling, Chisara Agor, Linda Buckley, Hardi Kurda and Sarah Jackson are also set to feature in 2025 festival.