Anthony Esland

Composer

Anthony Esland is an award-winning British composer for the stage and screen. He has written music for several short films, animated films and documentaries in the last few years, recently collaborating with indie feature film director Kelly Smith, and Icelandic recording artist Ólafur Arnalds; he is currently scoring his first feature film, Nice Mike, due for cinema release this year.

Anthony is increasingly in demand as a concert music composer, with several commissions to his name. Ensembles such as the BBC Singers have performed his music, and he has received bursaries and awards from the Bliss Trust, the PRS for Music Foundation and Sound and Music. In 2017, Anthony won Cincinnati Camerata’s international composition prize for his choral work Winter, and in 2018, his song cycle Scenes from a Wessex Life was shortlisted for the National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Composition Award. In March 2019, Anthony was a featured artist on BBC Introducing and a recording of his piece Marimba Movie was broadcast on Radio 3.

Recent concert music events include: a performance of The Darkling Thrush by Polaris Vocal Ensemble; a new Christmas carol, Nowell Sing We, performed by Quinborne Choir; a performance of The Sea! by Caritas Chamber Choir and the premiere of a new song cycle for soprano and piano, The Amherst Chronicles, at Harrow Summer Music Festival.

Anthony studied musicology and composition as an organ scholar at Cambridge University, conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and media composition and orchestration with ThinkSpace; he recently graduated from the National Film and Television School with an MA in Composing for Film and TV.