8th Annual Henfrey Prize for Composition Final Concert
Free entry - no registration required. Open to all.
The annual Henfrey Prize for Composition supports the creation of outstanding new chamber music and is open to students and recent graduates from the University of Oxford with a prize of £1000.
This year’s guest musicians are Gavin Osborn (flutes), Benjamin Powell(piano) and Nicola LeFanu (adjudicating composer).
The finalists are:
Leandro Landolina (2nd-year Music, St John’s College)
Frederick Sugarman (2nd-year Music, New College)
Elliot Wigham (1st-year Music, St John’s College)
About the artists
Gavin Osborn is a flautist, composer, interdisciplinary artist & teacher based in the Northwest UK. He studied flute with Clare Southworth, Peter Lloyd & Evelyn Frank, & composition with John Casken. Active for over 20 years as a performer, Gavin specialises in new music, whether acoustic or electroacoustic, through-composed, open-form, graphic or improvised. As a flautist he predominantly works with composers, commissioning & performing new works. To date this includes works by Nina Whiteman, Manuella Blackburn, Andrew Garbett, Sarah Keirle, EJ Ditmanson, Kelly Jayne Jones, Rachel Graff, Richard Whalley, Camden Reeves, & others). He is also flautist with Trio Atem, a flute/mezzo/cello trio likewise specialising in new music. Collaboration is at the heart of his work, whether with composers, other performing musicians, or across disciplines with dancers (Charlotte Spencer, Jennifer-Lyn Crawford), visual & performance artists (Michael Mayhew, Clare Wardman, Lisa Gorton, Karen McLeod) & others. As a composer, he creates works for the concert hall & elsewhere, often combining musical notation with text & visual image. In the last decade, a particular focus has been collaborative interdisciplinary work. Beginning with Beacons of Sound (with Heather Bamforth), more recently this has included creating works with EJ Ditmanson as geode, & with a number of different collaborators for the time-trace-place projects. He is a frequent collaborator with the Vonnegut Collective, for whom he also serves as a trustee. Gavin is a flute tutor at the University of Manchester, where he also coaches chamber ensembles & gives classes/workshops. He has also taught flute for the Universities of York & Huddersfield as a special consultant, & for Manchester Metropolitan University. He also teaches flute for primary & secondary school children.
Since winning the British Contemporary Piano Competition in 2010 Benjamin Powell has gained a reputation for intelligent and expressive performances with a strong commitment to contemporary music. He has performed across the UK and Europe as a soloist, chamber musician, and song accompanist in venues including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Snape Maltings, Bridgewater Hall, IRCAM (Paris), and Harpa (Reykjavik). In 2014 he was appointed pianist for Manchester’s leading contemporary music group, Psappha. He has taken part in a performance of the complete solo piano music of Helmut Lachenmann at the Aldeburgh Festival and a performance of Marco Stroppa’s Traiettoria in IRCAM, Paris. Benjamin’s recording of selections from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier was used in the recent National Theatre production of ‘the Hard Problem’, Sir Tom Stoppard’s latest play. Benjamin is much in demand as a chamber musician and has collaborated with many distinguished musicians including Stefano Canuti, Leland Chen, Levon Chilingirian, Craig Ogden, Miklós Perényi, Thomas Riebl, Sophie Rosa and Eva Thorarinsdottir. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music with Carole Presland and later (thanks to scholarships from the MBF, DAAD, and Lynn Foundation) with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Alexander Melnikov at the Hochschule für Musik Cologne and RNCM respectively. Benjamin has also attended the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove studying in the class of Thomas Adès. Since 2007 Benjamin has been a staff pianist at the RNCM where he now also teaches piano. His students have gone on to win prizes in major competitions, including BBC Young Musician of the Year, James Mottram International Competiton, Manchester International Piano Concerto Competition and the British Contemporary Piano Competition. Benjamin was born and raised in West Sussex and currently lives in Glossop with his wife and three children.
Nicola LeFanu has composed over a hundred works which have been widely played, broadcast and recorded; her music is published by Novello and by Edition Peters. She has been commissioned by the BBC, by festivals in UK and beyond, and by leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists. Her catalogue includes a number of works for string ensemble, and chamber music for a wide variety of mediums, often including voice. She has a particular affinity for vocal music and has composed eight operas. She is active in many aspects of the musical profession, as composer, teacher, director etc. From 1994–2008 she was Professor of Music at the University of York. Recent premieres include The Crimson Bird (2017, BBCSO/Ilan Volkov with Rachel Nicholls, soprano; text John Fuller), Triptych (2021,WCO/Anthony Hose with Jeremy Huw Williams, baritone; text Rowan Williams), Quintet for strings (2021, Sacconi quartet with Tim Lowe, cello) and several works for solo instruments, for voice and for chamber ensemble. She was born in England in 1947: her mother was the composer Elizabeth Maconchy. LeFanu studied at Oxford, RCM and, as a Harkness Fellow, at Harvard. She is married to the Australian composer David Lumsdaine.
