Page 23 - 2018 Powerlist

9 The Top 10

Shirley J
Thompson

Composer, Conductor
& Reader in Music,
University of
Westminster

ne of Britain’s most innovative composers, Shirley Award for outstanding contribution to culture globally, as
has created music extensively for TV/film, theatre, well as a University of Westminster Chancellor’s Award for
Odance and opera production. outstanding contribution to Research, Academic Enterprise
She made history when she became the first woman in and Teaching – she is a Reader in Composition and
Europe in 40 years to compose and conduct a symphony. Performance at the institution.
New Nation Rising: A 21st Century Symphony, performed and She was the first female executive of the Association
recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, is an epic of Professional Composers and now serves as an elected
musical story celebrating London’s thousand-year history, member of the Classical Music Executive for the British
and one in which the RPO is accompanied by two choirs, Academy of Song Writers, Composers and Authors.
solo singers, a rapper and dhol drummers, a total of nearly Shirley has been commissioned for several
200 performers. Royal engagements, including Commonwealth Day
This year her work has been commissioned for performing for the Queen at Westminster Abbey in
installation at the Venice Biennale and she is currently 1999, for the Queen’s summer party at Buckingham
making a programme for the BBC about Florence B Price, Palace in 2001, and opening the Stratford Cultural Quarter
the first African-American women to compose a symphony with the London Gala Orchestra with Prince Edward
and have it performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in attendance.
in 1932. An aficionado of dance, Shirley has created music for
She also appeared as keynote speaker on Diversity in contemporary choreographers, including commissions for
Classical Music at Classical Next Festival 2017, and was the Royal Ballet School.
founding member and keynote speaker at the first ever BBC Her most famous dance score for solo cello and
Diversity in Classic Music conference in October 2016. string orchestra, Shift, forms a part of the award-winning
Shirley recently won a University of West Indies Luminary ballet, PUSH.

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