Bel Comeau

Composer / Performer

Bel Comeau is an organist, pianist, and composer, active mainly in the classical and jazz worlds. Grounded in the European classical tradition, they were a chorister at Truro Cathedral as a child, and later graduated top of their year in music from Cambridge University. After questioning many of the assumptions in this world, they have since immersed themself in many different types of music-making more removed from establishment institutions.

At the age of 18 Bel won the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition; a couple of years later they won the Cambridge University Composition Competition, leading to a commission from the Britten Sinfonia. Their compositions and arrangements have been heard in the Royal Albert Hall, the Wigmore Hall, and Birmingham Symphony Hall. They have performed as a solo recitalist in venues including Westminster Abbey and King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Their solo repertoire incorporates five centuries of the classical canon alongside repertoire from Bjork to Michel Legrand to Fats Waller and Herbie Hancock, as well as frequent improvisations on audience requests. Bel has been featured on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune programme. There formal education also includes postgraduate study at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, Cologne.

More recently Bel has come to favour musical spontaneity and improvisation across diverse musical fields, together with increasing immersion in spaces that prioritise raw emotional expression over narrower technical criteria. They seek to unite the best of what the European classical tradition has to offer with a deconstruction of the limitations and exclusions often present in this world. They are also on an ongoing quest to work out what role music might play in social and environmental justice.

Upcoming projects include ensemble projects combining organ with musicians from jazz and hiphop scenes, and collaborations with drag artist Rizzla la Fizz.