About this Artist

Described as “at once intimate and visionary” by BBC Music Magazine, FREYA WALEY-COHEN’s music has been performed at Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Kings Place, Sage Gateshead, the Barbican Centre, and at Aldeburgh, Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Dartington, Cheltenham, St. Magnus, Ryedale, and Spitalfields festivals by musicians including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra of the Swan, Manson Ensemble conducted by Oliver Knussen, the Hermes Experiment, CHROMA ensemble, The Piatti, Wihan and Flux Quartets, Joanna McGregor, and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain.

Freya will be Associate Composer for the 2019/20 season at Wigmore Hall. She was Winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2017. She held an Open Space Residency at Snape Maltings from 2015 to 2017, during which she collaborated with architectural designers Finbarr O’Dempsey and Andrew Skulina to create Permutations, an architectural performance artwork which launched at the 2017 Aldeburgh Festival and has since featured at Dartington Festival, the Royal Academy of Music, and the Royal Institute of British Architecture North. She was 2013 Composer in Residence at Northern Chords festival, Sage Gateshead, 2013 Apprentice Composer with Orchestra of the Swan, a 2016 Composition Fellow at Tanglewood Festival, a 2016-2018 Associate Composer of NonClassical, and is Associate Composer at NightMusic at St. David’s Hall. 

In 2017, Signum Classics released a CD of Freya’s music including Permutations and Unveil - both of which were written while in residency at Aldeburgh and for her sister Tamsin Waley-Cohen. Her works have also been released on NMC Recordings, Nimbus Records, Listenpony, Nonclassical, and McMaster Records.

She is a founding member and artistic director of Listenpony, a concert series, commissioning body, and record label that programs classical music, both new and old, alongside a variety of other genres, including folk, jazz, and pop, in beautiful and unusual venues.

Upcoming commissions include works for Wigmore Hall, Knussen Chamber Orchestra for the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall, CHROMA ensemble’s Awakening tour, the Albion Quartet for the Aldeburgh Festival, Sainte-Mere Festival and Presteigne Festival, ORA Singers for Cheltenham Festival, and the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella series conducted by John Adams.