James Woodhall

I am a composer, conductor and educator. I have worked as a full-time teacher for nearly 15 years and have written music for a wide range of ensembles and in a range of styles. My choral music has been sung around the world and an album of my music was released on Divine Art Records in 2025. I was selected as one of six composers to have a piece performed by the Tenebrae Choir at London’s Wigmore Hall in January 2026. The pink singers sang my best known piece ‘When Darkness Descends‘ at London’s Cadogan Hall and this piece has been embraced by many choirs including those in South Korea, the USA, Germany, France, Latvia and around the UK. I am so glad that the message of finding light in dark times has brought reassurance to many. This is such an important part of all music and I am especially keen that I write pieces to bring people together and that will be enjoyed by performers and audiences.

I graduated from the University of Surrey with a First-Class degree, specialising in composition. I was awarded several prizes during my time there and was able to spend my second year on exchange to the University of North Texas where I wrote and staged my first musical and received performances from the University Orchestra. Upon returning to the UK I continued my studies at Surrey and was awarded a Masters in Composition. I was selected to represent the University at the Park Lane Group’s Composer’s Symposium and my piece was performed at London’s Festival Hall. I have written a great deal of music for the schools I have worked in including new musicals. I have also written new musicals for the National Youth Summer Music Camps and these were staged at the Stables Theatre, Milton Keynes. I was a finalist in the Berkeley Ensemble’s New Cobbet Prize in 2016 and my piece was performed at the Forge in Camden and received warm praise from the ensemble and Michael Berkeley. I won the No Dice Collective’s Call for Scores and they played my piece at the Anthony Burgess Centre in Manchester. My piece ‘The Wasteland’ was performed at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate in 2017 to launch a new exhibition based on T.S. Elliot’s seminal modernist masterpiece.  In 2018 I founded the Cold Light Ensemble which I compose for and direct from the piano. This fuses my jazz trio with string quartet and our crowdfunded album was released in 2019 after performances at St John Smith’s Square and the PizzaExpress Jazz Club in Soho. In 2020 one of my pieces for string quartet was played on an episode of Hannah Fry’s ‘Magic Numbers’ on BBC 4. As part of my role as Director of Music at a Catholic School I wrote many choral pieces for the student choirs and these were sung at Waltham Abbey and by other churches around the UK and as far away as New Zealand and the USA.