Eleanor Alberga

Eleanor Alberga is a highly-regarded mainstream British composer with commissions from the BBC Proms and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. With a substantial output ranging from solo instrumental works to full-scale symphonic works and opera, her music is performed all over the world. In 2015, her commissioned work Arise Athena! for the opening of the Last Night of the BBC Proms was seen and heard by millions, cementing her reputation as a composer of huge originality and consummate skill.

Eleanor has gathered a number of awards, most notably a NESTA Fellowship in 2000 and a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 2019. In 2020, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2021, she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for Services to British Music. Eleanor began her career as a pianist, winning the biennial Royal Schools of Music Scholarship for the West Indies in 1968 and becoming a finalist in the International Piano Concerto Competition in Dudley, UK in 1974. Beginning in 1978, Eleanor worked as a pianist and eventually Musical Director for the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, developing a deep understanding of modern dance and initiating her composition career with many commissions for the company.