Balancing the Score
A development scheme to support composers from underrepresented backgrounds.
The part-time residency gives two composers the opportunity to immerse themselves in life at Glyndebourne.
In March 2023, Lucy Armstrong and Alex Ho were announced as the composers for 2023-2026.
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The Balancing the Score composers are offered a variety of development opportunities over the 3 years. Armstrong and Ho composed fanfares for the opening night of Glyndebourne’s new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni which opened Festival 2023. Following this, the two participants were be commissioned to compose chamber music for the Glyndebourne Sinfonia, including members of Glyndebourne’s Pit Perfect development scheme,which were performed as part the Autumn Season in 2023 and 2024. Alongside these opportunities, the composers have attended rehearsals and performances in the Festival and Autumn Season.
The residency provides a range of development resources to the composers, who have been mentored by Glyndebourne’s Artistic Director Stephen Langridge. The composers also receive an annual bursary and the opportunity to access a Research & Development fund to support the creation of new work. The Balancing the Score programme’s connection with young people and local communities continues through Glyndebourne’s Learning & Engagement work.
As part of Autumn Season 2026 Glyndebourne will premiere Spark, a newly-commissioned opera by Lucy Armstrong and librettist Olivia Bell. This youth opera continues Glyndebourne’s decades-long commitment to creating work with, and for, young people, and will include members of Glyndebourne Youth Opera. It tells a tale of loss, friendship and finding the spark to keep going.
Lucy Armstrong, who studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, cites Stephen Sondheim as one of her key early inspirations and describes herself as most drawn to telling stories through song. She commented: ‘I’m so excited to have been selected for Glyndebourne’s Balancing the Score scheme. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity to be involved with such an inspiring company. It’s a game changer for me as an opera composer and I can’t wait to get stuck in.’
British-Chinese composer Alex Ho, whose latest music theatre piece Untold won the FEDORA Opera Prize 2022 ahead of its premiere at Concertgebouw Brugge in April, said: ‘At such a difficult moment for opera in the UK, it is uplifting to see Glyndebourne investing in new voices. I look forward to making work with their generous support and am excited to continue challenging myself to find new and meaningful stories to tell.’
The first group of Balancing the Score composers – Anna Appleby, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Cecilia Livingston and Ailie Robertson – began work in 2019. In February 2022, the Glyndebourne Youth Opera premiered the composers’ collaborative youth opera Pay the Piper which won Best Opera at the YAM (Young Audiences Music) Awards.
In 2022, the remit of the Balancing the Score scheme was broadened, to invite applications from composers from a range of different backgrounds currently underrepresented in the world of operatic composition.*
Biographies
Lucy studied at the RNCM and then at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she went on to be a Fellow in Composition.
Lucy is most drawn to telling stories through song. In 2022, Lucy was one of five composers who collaboratively scored Gods of the Game, an opera about football and corruption commissioned by Sky Arts. Produced by Grange Park Opera and Factory Films, it was broadcast live on Sky Arts. In 2017-2018 Lucy wrote a chamber opera, A Risk of Lobsters, in association with the Royal Opera House. A previous chamber opera composed for Bergen National Opera which was subsequently performed at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Lucy has received commissions from Psappha, Salford Choral Society, Cambridge Philharmonic, Borealis Saxophone Quartet, the Blair/ Mertens Duo, FontanaMIX and writes regularly for saxophonist Gillian Blair.
She won a place on the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Composers’ Scheme where she was the Rosie Johnson RPS Wigmore Hall Apprentice Composer. After working closely with Psappha ensemble on their ‘Composing For’ scheme, Lucy was awarded their inaugural Sir Peter Maxwell Davies commission in 2018 to write a 15-minute chamber work which she titled The Executioner’s Pond. Using composition as a creative tool for outreach and education is an important part of Lucy’s practice. She has led participation and learning projects with the London Sinfonietta and songwriting projects with the Piccadilly Symphony Orchestra and RNCM Engage. Lucy’s collaborative project with Kate Pearson and RNCM Engage was nominated for a Times Higher Education Award in 2018.
Winner of the UK Critics’ Circle Young Artist Award 2021, Alex Ho is a British-Chinese composer based in London whose music and stageworks have been described as ‘menacing and poetic’ (Guardian) and a ‘remarkable experience’ (Schmopera). Alex is Artist-in-Residence at Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier and Associate Composer at Oxford Lieder Festival. His (anti-)opera, Untold, co-created with Olivier-nominated choreographer Julia Cheng, has won the FEDORA Opera Prize 2022 ahead of its performances at Concertgebouw Brugge and O. Festival Rotterdam in Spring 2023.
Alex has had pieces performed /commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, Royal Opera House, Het Concertgebouw, National Opera Studio, Music Theatre Wales and London Sinfonietta. He is co-director of Tangram, a collective of composers and performers of Chinese and western instruments who are newly appointed Associate Artists at LSO St Luke’s 2022-2025.
* The different backgrounds currently underrepresented in the world of operatic composition might, for example, relate to the ten protected characteristics listed in the Equalities Act 2010, namely: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Glyndebourne also invited applications from those with backgrounds not listed as a protected characteristic, for example, socio-economic and educational.
Image credits: Header image, Pay the Piper 2022, photo by Richard Hubert Smith | Images of Lucy Armstrong and Alex Ho at Glyndebourne 2023, photos by James Bellorini
