Described as “at once intimate and visionary” (BBC Music Magazine), Freya Waley-Cohen’s music balances earthy rhythmic vitality with fragility, luminous spaces, and a sense of the otherworldly.

She has been commissioned by ensembles and institutions including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Proms, Wigmore Hall, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, The King’s Singers, Manchester Collective, and festivals including Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, and Santa Fe.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season include a violin concerto for Tamsin Waley-Cohen, commissioned by BBC NOW, Aldeburgh Festival, and Philharmonie Luxembourg, and *The Ladybird*, a concertino touring with Lucie Horsch and Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. New chamber works include commissions for the Sacconi Quartet, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and the International Guitar Festival.

Waley-Cohen’s debut album, *Spell Book* (NMC Recordings, 2024), received critical acclaim from *Gramophone*, *Limelight*, and *BBC Music Magazine*. Drawing on poems from Rebecca Tamás’s *WITCH*, the work also inspired her first opera, premiered in 2022 and subsequently nominated for an Ivor Novello Award.

Recent orchestral works include *Mother Tongue* (2024) for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, *Demon* (2023) for the CBSO and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and *Pocket Cosmos* (2022), written during her residency with the London Chamber Orchestra. Chamber works include *the moon, the moss & the mushrooms* (2024), *Pisces* (2024), and *Stone Fruit* (2023).

A Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize winner, Waley-Cohen has held residencies with Wigmore Hall, Snape Maltings, Nonclassical, and St David’s Hall. She was also a founding member and artistic director of the Listenpony concert series and record label, and now lives in London.