This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Awards
Nominations for Ivors Composer Awards announced
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 4 November 2020
The nominees for this year’s Ivors Composer Awards have been announced. Formerly known as the British Composer Awards, they shouldn’t be confused with the Ivor Novello Awards. Although they are Ivor Novello Awards. Sort of. Just different Ivor Novello Awards. So that should all be clear now.
No, come on, let’s do this properly. It is all quite simple really. The main Ivor Novello Awards ceremony, which took place in September, is more focussed on pop music, whereas the Ivors Composer Awards recognise people who make proper music, like classical and jazz. Classical music does sometimes get nominated for the main Ivor Novello Awards, but it’s all soundtrack stuff, so basically pop. Now we’re definitely clear.
Look, just think of it like this: The main Ivor Novello Awards are for songwriters and the Ivors Composer Awards are for composers. Easy. I know you sometimes like to call songwriters composers, but that’s because you’re an arse. Ed Sheeran will never win anything at the Ivors Composer Awards, but all the winners at the Ivors Composer Awards get Ivor Novello Awards. It really is very simple.
Now in their eighteenth year (if you include when they were called the British Composer Awards, which you should), the Ivors Composer Awards this year adopted a blind judging process. That has resulted in 50% of nominees being up for awards for the first time. The winners will be announced on BBC Radio 3 on 1 Dec.
Chair of The Ivors Academy’s Awards Committee, Gary Carpenter, says: “The works nominated for this year’s Composer Awards perfectly illustrate how contemporary classical, jazz and sound arts respond to the world around us and shape our understanding of the contradictions, uncertainties and hopes that create the fabric of our lives”.
“On behalf of music creators and The Ivors Academy I would like to congratulate all nominees on their achievement”, he adds. “As our world feels increasingly uncertain, we must treasure what makes life so wonderful – music, inspiration and escape”.
Here are all the nominees:
Chamber Orchestral
Robin Haigh – Grin
Sally Beamish – Hover
Ryan Wigglesworth – Piano Concerto
Stuart Macrae – Prometheus Symphony
Josephine Stephenson – Une Saison En Enfer
Choral
Cheryl Frances-Hoad – Bogoróditse Dévo, Ráduysi
Rachel Portman – Earth Song
Bernard Hughes – I Sing Of Love
Richard Blackford – Pietà
Michael Finnissy – Pious Anthems And Voluntaries
Community and Participation
Anne Dudley – I Am Alban
Oliver Vibrans – More Up
Judith Weir – The Big Picture
Bushra El-Turk – Tuqus
Paul Rissmann – What Do You Do With An Idea?
Jazz Composition For Large Ensemble
Tom Haines – A Tall Tale
Charlie Bates – Crepuscule
Jonny Mansfield – Present
Sam Eastmond – The Pink Shagpile Carpet Story aka The King Of Spank
Jelly Cleaver – What Is Understanding
Jazz Composition For Small Ensemble
Alex Hitchcock – Calvados
Matt London – Elemental Utterances
Calum Gourley – New Ears Suite
Renell Shaw – The Vision They Had
Mark Lockheart – Weird Weather
Large Chamber
Claire M Singer – Gleann Ciúin
Oliver Leith – Honey Siren
Richard Ayres – No 50 (The Garden)
Rebecca Saunders – Scar
Edmund Finnis – The Centre Is Everywhere
Large Orchestral
Mark Simpson – Clarinet Concerto
Joe Cutler – Hawaii Hawaii Hawaii
Jonny Greenwood – Horror Vacui
Jasper Dommett – Night Music
Emily Howard – The Anvil
Small Chamber
Robert Laidlow – Aroha
Elena Langer – It’s Not You, It’s Me
Amir Konjani – Kraken Cello Concertante
Timothy Cooper – …Shadows That In Darkness Dwell…
Daniel Fardon – Six Movements
Solo or Duo
Newton Armstrong – A Line Alongside Itself
Thomas Gibbs – Cloud Engine
Gareth Moorscraft – Diaries Of The Early Worm
Harrison Birtwistle – Duet For Eight Strings
Georgia Denham – Kindly, Softly
Sound Art
Sophie Cooper – Intact
Caroline Devine – On Common Ground
Khyam Allami – Requiem For The 21st Century
Olivia Louvel – The Sculptor Speaks
Kathy Hinde – Twittering Machines
Stage Works
Conor Mitchell – Abomination: A Dup Opera
Philip Venables – Denis & Katya
Gabriel Prokofiev – A Sense Of Time
