Shirley J. Thompson

The multi-award-winning composer, university professor of music and film-maker Shirley J. Thompson, is a visionary artist and cultural activist that has transformed contemporary classical music with ground breaking works that have attracted new audiences worldwide. Thompson is a highly versatile and prolific composer with many compositions for orchestra, the operatic stage, the instrumental/vocal/dance/multi-media Shirley Thompson Ensemble, TV, film, theatre, choir, and the solo voice.

The music of Shirley J. Thompson is often described as ‘superbe’ (Le Figaro) and ‘powerful and striking’ (BBC Radio 3) and she is thought to be the first woman in Europe to have composed and conducted a symphony within the last 40 years. The work, New Nation Rising: A 21st Century London Symphony is an epic musical story celebrating London’s thousand-year history, and one in which the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is accompanied by two choirs, solo singers, a rapper and dhol drummers, a total of nearly 200 performers in the recording of it. This extraordinary work was originally commissioned to celebrate Her Majesty the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 and the concept was latterly assumed as a framework for the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony.

She co-scored the ballet PUSH that toured to over 40 of the world’s major opera houses, including The Marinsky Theatre, La Scala Milan and Sydney Opera House. Her opera series, Heroines of Opera (2006), encapsulating narratives of iconic women in history and especially those of African and Caribbean heritage, has created exciting new roles for extraordinary performers as well as challenging the traditional portrayal of women in the operatic canon. Thompson has consistently demonstrated in her work a belief in the transformative power of music to affect social, cultural and political change, setting up educational schemes in the UK such as Every Child A Musician. Further to her personal commission from King Charles III to compose orchestral music for The Coronation in May 2023, Thompson has been claimed as ‘the present and future’ of British classical music (https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/thecoronation-royal-music-through-time) in a 700-year legacy of iconic composers from Tomas Tallis to the symphonic composer, Ralph
Vaughan Williams (The Gramophone June, 2023).