Biography

Claire Cope is an award winning British composer whose work spans both contemporary classical and jazz and improvised music. She has been described by Jerome Wilson as ‘a powerful new compositional voice’ and by Monarch magazine as ‘a phenomenal rising star’, and her music has been performed in Europe and the United States. Concerned primarily with emotional connectivity and story-telling, Claire’s music has a strong sense of narrative and ‘journeying’, with melodic emphasis at the forefront.

Claire studied composition with Gary Carpenter and Emily Howard at the Royal Northern College of Music, and she has collaborated with a number of ensembles and musicians across the world including the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Bones Apart Trombone Quartet and Foden’s Band, flautist Iva Ugrčić, trumpeter Lucy Humphris, the Fairey Band, the Carice Singers, the Marian Consort and the Apollo Saxophone Quartet. Winner of the 2024 LunArt Call for Scores, and a Marvin Hamlisch International Music Award in 2022, she has been commissioned by the RNCM Brass Festival, Music at Malling Festival and Andy Scott amongst others, and over the past 5 years has been selected for a number of worldwide compositional programmes including the LunArt Composer Hub with Dorothy Chang (2023), the New Voices composer Academy at Three Choirs Festival (2024), and the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute at Princeton (2025). For the 2025-2026 season, Claire was selected for the prestigious Philharmonia Composer Academy, with their ensemble giving the world premiere of her work ‘Cold Earth’ at the Royal Festival Hall in May 2026, with the recording due to be released by NMC in October 2026.

As a bandleader, she has performed at the Manchester Jazz Festival, the London Jazz Festival and as part of the BBC Proms Plus Series, broadcast on BBC Radio 3. In 2023. Claire won a UK Arts Council DYCP grant to compose new music for her 11 piece contemporary jazz ensemble, Ensemble C. Following their successful debut album ‘Small World’ in 2020, their latest album ‘Every Journey’ was released in March 2025 on the New York based Adhyâropa label to widespread critical acclaim, with Ron Schepper of Textura describing it as ‘a tremendous realization of her vision’ and was selected on a number of ‘Best of 2025’ releases including All About Jazz, BeatCaffeine, Goldmine Magazine<, Textura, and San Francisco Jazz.

In the 2026-2027 year, Claire will be working with Missy Mazzoli and the NDR Radiophilharmonie on their composition workshop programme in Hanover, Germany. Claire is also a passionate educator, and works as an international grade, jazz and diploma examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.