AMY BRYCE
composer
Amy Bryce is a British composer based in London whose deliberately playful scores produce music that is strikingly visual or theatrical. Notable commissions include BBC Radio 3, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Stiftung Kunst und Musik für Dresden, the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, and the Royal Philharmonic Society. Described as "producing music in often unexpected, ever-imaginative ways" by London Youth Choirs, for whom Amy composed the recently Ivors Classical Award-nominated, In Your Hands, Amy’s experiences as a queer artist means she approaches the industry through a lens of rejection and reclaiming, offering instead a sense playfulness and wit.
Amy’s music has been performed at internationally recognised festivals and venues, including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, the Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, and the Barbican. Her music has been released on NMC records, LSO Live, and Total Silence (Cologne.)
Notable recent commissions include Britten Pears Arts, for whom Amy wrote the finale for the Celebration 2025 Festival at Snape Maltings. The Marian Consort premiered Madrigals for Plants on SWR Kultur as part of the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, later performing the UK premiere at the Barbican. A subsequent larger commission, an outreach project where the Marian Consort will join forces with primary school students in Devon, will premiere at the Dunster Festival this year.
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Getting to know Amy
Can you describe your music in three words?
Playful, witty, honest.
What first drew you to composing, and what keeps you curious now?
Training to be a classical musician is a really weird thing to do. I found myself in equal parts all-consumingly inspired by all the music I was coming into contact with, yet dissatisfied by the conventions and systems I was being put through in order to study it. All the co-curricular music I was involved in growing up, I would bring my own things, whether that was an arrangement, or an original composition with lots of theatrics (think ‘pirate wind quintet’). They were like little love letters and little acts of rebellion at the same time. Nothing has really changed now, I’ll stop when I don’t have anything left to say!
Which non-musical influence has shaped your work the most?
People. Collaboration is really important to me and the main reason why my music remains so varied is because I work with so many different people, and I love that there is a little bit of someone else in everything I put out. If you tell me I’m writing for ‘violin’ that means nothing to me, I’m very much like “ok but who?” It matters to me deeply.
What are you most excited to explore during Magnum Opus?
A chance to think about what my music sounds like without a brief or a pull towards social commentary. In my practice as a queer artist, it often gets political and I like to say the things about the real things that need to be spoken about and can be lavishly explored through art. I love it when my work is also activism, but I’m also a tired queer and I would like to write something very beautiful that is about absolutely nothing remotely charged.
Is there a composer or artist you return to again and again?
Björk. I think she’s got a stunning relationship with the world and her art. My avant-garde pop career is coming but I’ve planned it for a couple of decades time.
How do you like to begin a new piece?
Once the flat is clean I will begin. Then I will write something down and I will be very unhappy with whatever that is. This will usually resolve itself in water, so I’ll either figure out what I actually want at around length 60/100 of the swimming pool, or I’ll start singing what I want in the shower and have to get the phone recorder out. I’ve spent so many hours transcribing my shower wails.
What do you hope an audience feels when they hear your music?
I don’t think that is really for me to say. I’m always curious about what that will be, but never with expectation.
Tell us about a recent musical discovery you’ve loved.
I was travelling recently and in a random bar they were playing the most immense Samba and Bossa Nova from the 70s. People like Gilberto Gil and Juan Pablo Torres and I just Shazammed the whole lot and fell down a rabbit hole. The sort of music that can’t be wedged between bar lines - bliss!