Shirley J. Thompson OBE

Shirley Thompson was born in East London to Jamaican parents and began her musical life playing violin in youth symphony orchestras before studying music at the University of Liverpool and composition at Goldsmiths College. She achieved early Grade 8 Theory with distinction while still a young student, foreshadowing a career built on technical mastery.

In 1994, Thompson formed the Shirley Thompson Ensemble, a platform blending contemporary classical orchestration with singers, dancers, visual artists, and improvisation, and drawing on world music influences alongside classical training. Commissioned to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002, she composed and conducted New Nation Rising, A 21st Century Symphony, an epic musical portrait of London's thousand-year history performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with two choirs, solo singers, a rapper, and dhol drummers — nearly 200 performers in total. The work made her the first woman in Europe in over 40 years to have both composed and conducted her own symphony.

Thompson's body of work spans symphonies, operas including A Child of the Jago and her Heroines of Opera chamber opera series, ballet scores including Shift for the internationally toured production PUSH, and music for film, television, and theatre. She was named in the Evening Standard's Power List of Britain's most influential Black people for six consecutive years, was appointed OBE in 2019 for services to music, and was selected as one of the composers to write music performed at King Charles III's coronation in 2023. She continues to work as Professor of Music at the University of Westminster, holding a PhD, DMus, DPhil and DArts alongside fellowships of the Higher Education Academy (fHEA) and the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).