We’re delighted to announce the new Composer Advisory Group (CAG) — our panel of 12 music industry professionals, primarily composers and music creators, who bring diverse experiences and perspectives to help shape our work.
The Composer Advisory Group provides strategic input across our programmes, policies and advocacy, ensuring our work remains relevant, inclusive and responsive to music creators at all career stages, and that we continue to respond to current needs and challenges across the sector.
What is the Composer Advisory Group?
The Composer Advisory Group is a core part of how we ensure that composers and music creators are at the heart of our work.
By bringing together the voices and experiences of composers from across the music sector, the group helps us develop programmes and policies that genuinely reflect the needs and experiences of the communities we serve. The Composer Advisory Group supports us to remain accountable, relevant and responsive to composers at all career stages.
“The Composer Advisory Group is essential to how we work. As an organisation dedicated to supporting new music, we need to ensure that creators’ voices directly shape our programmes and strategic direction.
The Composer Advisory Group brings invaluable lived experience and professional insight that challenges us, guides us and ultimately makes our work more effective and relevant for the communities we serve. It is incredibly exciting to be welcoming such a diverse and experienced advisory group.”
— Laonikos Psimikakis-Chalkokondylis
Head of Programmes, Sound and Music
Meet the Composer Advisory Group
The 2025–26 Composer Advisory Group brings together composers, performers, researchers and music technologists working across a wide range of practices:
- Yshani Perinpanayagam — Conductor, Composer, Pianist
- Francesca Simmons — Artist
- Hanna Tuulikki — Artist, Composer, Performer
- Deirdre Gribbin — Composer, Practitioner Researcher
- Emma Margetson — Composer and Researcher
- Anselm McDonnell — Composer and Producer
- Midori Komachi — Composer and Violinist
- Clare Johnston — Composer and Music Technologist
- Ruari Paterson-Achenbach — Researcher, Artist
- Owen Shiers — Musician and Composer
- David Austin Grey — Composer, Pianist, Educator
How we’ll work together
We will invite Composer Advisory Group members to a number of activities each year, including policy review working groups and ad-hoc consultations on programme design, recruitment processes and our access offer.
We will work with members’ areas of expertise and availability, and have designed a flexible structure that offers multiple ways to contribute throughout the year. This approach ensures we make the most of the expertise, passion and range of interests and lived experiences within the group.
Term and recognition
The Composer Advisory Group term will run from October 2025 for a minimum of 12 months and a maximum of 18 months, depending on organisational planning and member commitments.
Members are paid for their time, with expenses covered where applicable, and their contribution will be recognised publicly across Sound and Music’s communications.
About Sound and Music
Our mission is to be the base camp for anyone in the UK who wants to make, experience or support new music and sound to shape the modern world.
We deliver artist-centred development programmes and essential funding to young, emerging and established artists breaking new ground across music-making in the UK. We lead research, campaigns, networks, archives and collections to further originality, discovery and equity within music.
For over 15 years, we have worked with thousands of music creators and hundreds of organisations to boost musical creativity, careers, cultures and communities.
Reducing barriers and championing inclusion underpins everything we do driven by our sector leading Fair Access Principles.
Sound and Music is supported by Arts Council England and proud to be a National Youth Music Organisation.
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