Emily Hazrati
Composer
Emily Hazrati
[25.11.24] Oxford International Song Festival is delighted to announce the appointment of Emily Hazrati as Associate Composer 2024-26. At this year’s Festival, the world premiere of two songs by her, setting a text by Joseph Spence, inspired by Byron's Don Juan, was given by Ella Taylor (soprano) and Jocelyn Freeman (pianist) and in 2025, Emily will create a substantial new song cycle in collaboration with Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh. A large-scale work will follow in October 2026.
Established in 2019, the Associate Composer scheme is a multi-year role involving three commissions, increasing in scope each year, and showcasing the composer's other work at the Festival. Previous Associate Composers have been Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Alex Ho.
Emily Hazrati said: “I am honoured and beyond excited to be Oxford Song’s Associate Composer for 2024-26. Storytelling, narrative and the voice lie at the heart of my creative practice - the opportunity to compose two major song cycles over an extended period feels both exhilarating and invaluable at this stage in my career. I am immensely grateful to Oxford Song for their support and can’t wait to get started on my first commission, in collaboration with writer Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh: a new work inspired by stories and characters from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings), the national epic of ancient Persia.”
Sholto Kynoch, Artistic Director of Oxford Song, said: "It is so exciting to announce Emily Hazrati as our Associate Composer. Emily has been on my radar since 2022, when two of our Young Artist duos included her work in their showcase recital programmes. I was immediately struck by her vibrant musical language and clear affinity for song, and am certain she is going to be one of this country's leading song composers. Her ideas for the two major cycles she will write as part of the Associate Composer scheme are wonderful, as is the fact that she is keen to collaborate with poets to create new texts, and I cannot wait to hear the first of these next October."
The Associate Composer scheme is part of Oxford Song's Song Futures programme, which commissions new works and promotes the existing work of contemporary composers. Oxford Song is grateful to the Nicholas John Trust as founder supporter of Song Futures.
Biography
Emily Hazrati is a composer and educator based in London. Her music centres around environment, place and belonging; frequently informed by sounds and landscapes from the natural world, as well as ideas around breath, ritual, and circularity.
Emily is Oxford Song’s Associate Composer for 2024-26, with upcoming commissions and performances of her work at Oxford International Song Festival. Current projects include writing for London Symphony Orchestra as one of their Panufnik Composers 2024-25, a new work for The Marian Consort on the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2025 Composers programme, and a choral commission for St Martin’s Voices. Emily has worked with ensembles and organisations including the BBC Singers, Royal Ballet and Opera, Ligeti Quartet, National Youth Choir and CHROMA ensemble, amongst many others. She has recently been developing her second chamber opera TIDE, commissioned by Britten Pears Arts, which received its first, sold-out performances at the Aldeburgh Festival 2022.
Emily’s music has received multiple broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, and performances in the UK, Canada, Germany, USA, and New Zealand. Her compositions have been released on NMC Recordings as part of their Young Composers 5 album, receiving critical acclaim from BBC Music Magazine. In 2024, she was awarded PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund for a new song project with Ella Taylor and Jocelyn Freeman, premiering in SongEasel’s 2024 ‘A Vast Obscurity’ series.
When not composing, Emily is Composition Tutor & Coordinator at Centre for Young Musicians (part of Guildhall Young Artists), and is a composer on Music in the Round’s WeCompose programme: an initiative bringing composition to KS3 and KS4 students across the country.
Song List
This list is likely to be of songs that have been performed at Oxford International Song Festivals and Oxford Song events, and may not be comprehensive of this composer's compositions. This database is ever growing as a work in progress, with further songs regularly being added.
| Justice | Emily Hazrati |
| Mother Love (2023) | Emily Hazrati |
| My name is... | Emily Hazrati |
| Prologue | Emily Hazrati |
| Sans everything (or, Don Juan reflects) | Emily Hazrati |
| Schoolboy | Emily Hazrati |
| The Seven Ages of Don Juan | Emily Hazrati |
