The British composer Charlotte Bray is one of the most esteemed and in-demand composers of her generation. Championed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, her music has been performed at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Tanglewood, Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, BBC Proms and with renowned conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Marin Alsop, Daniel Harding, Jessica Cottis, and Karina Canellakis.
Charlotte has emerged as a distinctive and outstanding talent of her generation. Exhibiting uninhibited ambition and desire to communicate, her music is exhilarating, inherently vivid, and richly expressive with lyrical intensity. In 2019 Bray was awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Invisible Cities (2011). Winner of the Lili Boulanger Prize (2014), Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent (2014). Bray has also been Composer in Residence with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Sound and Music (2009-10), Oxford Lieder Festival (2011) and Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival (2015). Portrait discs of Charlotte’s music have been recorded on RTF Classical (2018) and NMC Records (2014).
Originally from High Wycombe, Bray graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire with First Class Honours, having studied composition with Joe Cutler, and then completed a Masters in Composition with Distinction from the Royal College of Music, studying with Mark-Anthony Turnage. She went on to participate in the Britten-Pears Contemporary Composition Course with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Magnus Lindberg and studied at Tanglewood Music Centre with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas.