ISCM World New Music Days 2025
The Scottish panel selected a shortlist of six composers’ works as the official submission for the consideration of the international jury.
At least one of the six works included in our national submission will be performed during the festival.
14 submissions were received from Scottish and Scottish-based composers, across 8 categories. The announcement of the works selected for performance across the ten-day event is expected to be made in September 2024.
World New Music Days 2025 will provide an important platform for the selected composer, and an important opportunity for Scotland-based creators to engage more widely with an international audience and raise the profile of Scotland’s new music scene.
Work Selected For Performance
Emily Doolittle - Gannetry
Gannetry (2021) is a graphically notated work for clarinet and live electronics, based on the sound world of a gannet colony. I’m fascinated by the rich interweaving of guttural sounds as tens of thousands of gannets nest, spar, soar, and dive. This piece was composed in tandem with Dawn Wood’s writing of her poem Gannet Rock, with my ideas for the piece helping shape her poem, and vice versa. Piece and poem can be performed separately, or interwoven in performance. Gannetry was commissioned by Ruta Vitkauskaite and the Modern Chants project for clarinetist Jo Nicholson, with funding from Creative Scotland.
ISCM World New Music Days 2025 - Scottish Section Shortlist
Emily Doolittle
Canadian-born, Glasgow-based composer and researcher Emily Doolittle’s music has been described as “masterful” (Musical Toronto), “eloquent and effective,” and “the piece that grabbed me by the heart” (The WholeNote). She has an ongoing interest in zoomusicology—the relationship between animal songs and music—which she explores in both her composition and through interdisciplinary collaboration with biologists. Recent activities include the premiere of Reedbird, commissioned and performed by the Vancouver Symphony, the premiere of (re)cycling I: metals for found and recycled percussion objects by Architek Percussion at the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg, and writing the music for a 2023 Audible audiobook adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. She is currently working on a set of pieces based on Sephardic and Spanish poetry about nightingale song for the early music Ensemble La Cigale in Montreal. Emily is an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Submitted work: Gannetry
Richard Greer
Richard Greer is a composer and Artistic Director living and working in Scotland. He has worked internationally with professional ensembles and musicians including The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, RCS Symphony Orchestra, Red Note Ensemble, Viridian Quartet, Athenaeum Winds, The Brodick Quartet, Lewis Banks, Sean Shibe, Kevin Cahill, Val Wellbanks and Ensemble Modern.
His work has featured in concerts and festivals including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (The Astrid Quartet, Davur Juul Magnussen) and The Piano (The Glasgow New Music Expedition), ‘That’s Beautiful That is’ (Haddit Collective, Birmingham).
Recent work has included a 35-minute String Quartet:‘Forgiveness and The Fear of Forever’, Piano Duo (premiered by The Glasgow New Music Expedition at ‘The Piano’), ‘The Last Waltz’, a collaboration with Artist Rhona Mühlebach, an Oratorio about artificial intelligence ‘The Prophecy of Cellarius’. In September of 2017 his work 'Sober Oberserver Sees (HD)' was featured by Ensemble Modern at 'Klangspuren' in Schwaz, Austria.
Submitted work: Ridge A
Chris Hutchings
Chris Hutchings is a composer based in Edinburgh; his works have been performed around the world and been broadcast on Radio 3 and Radio 4, and won several prizes.
Chris is passionate about social and environmental justice, and runs #ChoirsForClimate (www.choirsforclimate.com), providing resources and music to choirs for campaigning about the environment.
Recent competition wins include the first prize at the 2019 Murau International Music Festival, Austria, the 2019 Wicker Park Singers composition competition in Chicago, and Kantos Choir's 2021 composition competition "Snow on Snow".
Submitted work: Let Them Not Say
Ben Lunn
‘BEN LUNN puts his beloved birthplace Sunderland on the musical map’ – Linton Stephens, BBC Radio 3
Ben Lunn has forged himself a unique position within the new music landscape. As a composer, Lunn’s music reflects the material world around him, connecting to his North-Eastern heritage or how disability impacts the world around him or his working-class upbringing.
Alongside this, he has become renowned for his championship of others, which have seen him creating unique collaborations with musicians from across the globe and developing unique concert experiences and opportunities for others. He has won accolades from the Scottish Music Awards in both 2023 and 2020 for his work with Hebrides Ensemble and Drake Music Scotland, and in 2024 was shortlisted for the RPS Awards for his concerto History Needs… composed for Nicholas McCarthy. In 2022, Ben Lunn became the first North-East composer to be selected for the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Composer Scheme which sees him paired with Music in the Round.
Submitted work: Can’t you see…
Stuart MacRae
Born in Inverness, Stuart MacRae writes music of elemental power and emotional subtlety. Notable works include a Violin Concerto (2001) and Gaudete for soprano and orchestra (2008), both of which were premiered at the BBC Proms. Stage works include the operas Ghost Patrol (2012), which won a 2013 South Bank Sky Arts Award, and Anthropocene (2018) which won a Scottish Award for New Music.
Stuart’s music has been performed at the Royal Opera House and Edinburgh International Festival, and by ensembles including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Hebrides Ensemble, BCMG and London Sinfonietta, as well as numerous orchestras.
Stuart was Composer in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from 1999 to 2003. He was resident composer at the Spannungen Kammermusikfest in Heimbach, Germany in 2003, and Edinburgh Festival Creative Fellow at the University of Edinburgh from 2005 to 2006. From 2017-19 he was Composer in Association at the Lammermuir Festival. photo credit: foxbrush.co.uk
Submitted work: SUPERNOVA
Matthew Whiteside
‘Matthew Whiteside, composer and Artistic Director of The Night With... based in Glasgow. His music is lauded as "Effective and Unsettling" by BBC Music Magazine and "post-minimalist bold sparseness" by the Herald.
He won the SMIA Award for Creative Programming at the Scottish Awards for New Music in 2020 and was named One to Watch by the Scotsman.
Recent works include commissions from the United Strings of Europe, Scottish Opera Connect. Glasgow Barons and Crash Ensemble.
Submitted work: Quartet No. 6 (Ma)
ISCM World New Music Days 2025
The ISCM Scottish Section proudly invites Scottish and Scotland-based composers to submit their scores for World New Music Days Portugal 2025, to be held in Lisbon and Porto from 30th May to 7th June.
This year's WNMD theme, "Thirst for Change," guides the selection process, with the jury showing a preference for works that align with the festival's central theme.
The ISCM World New Music Days festival is an esteemed annual event showcasing contemporary musical compositions from around the world. It serves as a platform for musical exchange, fostering innovation, creativity, and cultural dialogue.
Please refer to the official Call for Works document, complete with guidelines, available here. The submission form will be accessible starting Friday, 8th of March, at 10AM.
Only one submission per composer is allowed.
Priority is given to works under 10 minutes, composed post-2015 with highest priority given to works composed post-2020
Please note, submissions from composers featured in WNMD 2024 Faroe Islands will not be considered.
Deadline for applications is 12PM, Wednesday, 3rd April 2024. Late submissions will not be considered.
