About
Tom is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose music engages with environmental issues, teenage mental health, and the dualities, contradictions, and blurred boundaries between appearance and reality. Also fascinated by antithetical and oxymoronic ideas, Tom creates dense and gestural sound worlds that invite listeners into spaces of ambiguity, complexity, and emotional depth.
His orchestral piece The Hunt (2023) challenges the ethics of fox hunting in the UK, while Extinction (2024), written for chamber orchestra and premiered at Blackheath Halls, brings attention to endangered species within Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Deeply committed to the emotional well-being of young people, Tom frequently explores teenage mental health in pieces such as Utterations of Anxiety (2021), It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2022), Intricacies of the Mind (for solo cello) (2023), and Fight, Flee, or Freeze (for solo violin) (2025). It’s Kind of a Funny Story was part of the Daryl Runswick Composition Competition final, adjudicated by Sarah Lacey, and was performed at the atmospheric Peckham Asylum.
Tom’s interest in contradiction and layered meaning is evident in works like Honey Trapping (2025), a chamber piece that reflects the deceptive allure behind manipulation, and Treacle (for large orchestra) – winner of the Royal College of Music’s Large Ensemble Composition Competition—which will premiere in Autumn 2025. In Treacle, delicate orchestrations initially suggest sweetness, only to reveal entrapment and ironic tension.
With a strong affinity for ambient sound and the way environment influences listening, Tom was commissioned in 2023 to write a Sonic Journey for Modern House Magazine. Snowdon, inspired by a post-Covid walk up the famous Welsh mountain, was described as “breath-taking and bold in concept” (Grace McCloud) and featured in Sound UK’s Sonic Journeys series, alongside artists such as Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory.
Tom graduated with a BMus in Composition from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in 2024, where he studied with genre-defying mentors including Alex Paxton, Nye Parry, Amir Konjani, and Laura Jurd. He is currently pursuing a Master of Music in Composition at the Royal College of Music under Ken Hesketh, supported by the Charles Stewart Richardson Scholarship for Composition. Recent highlights have included the premiere of Grama/Loka for ten bassoons and electric guitar, and Threadwork (for Consort 21), a baroque ensemble known for blending period instruments with contemporary classical.
Collaboration is at the heart of Tom’s creative practice. In 2023, he co-created Intergenerational Traffic with choreographers Xavier Williams and Timothy Turner (USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance), a cross-arts work combining sound, nature, movement, and urban environments. In 2024, he joined eight Royal College of Music composers to produce Stitched in Sound : A Collective Sonic Tapestry, an immersive performance of music, sculpture, visuals, and dance which premiered in the Belle Shenkman Studio at the Royal College of Music.
As a performer, Tom is recognised for his bowed electric guitar playing—a unique sound he often writes for himself, while also collaborating with other composers exploring the instrument’s expressive potential. His performances add a visceral, tactile quality to his musical voice.
A passionate advocate for music’s role in emotional healing, Tom actively contributes to local community projects and charity events promoting mental health and well-being through music. He believes deeply in music’s power to connect people and its ability to be both accessible and transformative.
