Charlotte Harding

Charlotte Harding is an Ivors Award-winning composer, orchestrator and saxophonist whose visionary synthesis of contemporary classical and electronic music can be heard on stages and screens in the UK and beyond.

This year, she makes her BBC Proms debut with The Orchestra: A Young Person’s Guide in collaboration with the National Open Youth Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Other upcoming performances and projects include Never Turn Back, a full-length dance film co-scored with Keaton Henson (BalletBoyz); The Diver, a 90s house-inspired concept album in collaboration with percussionist Joby Burgess; and her electro-acoustic orchestral work Kraftwerk Rewerk, co-composed with Lloyd Coleman, (Paraorchestra) which makes its Forwards Festival debut on the main stage later this summer.

Charlotte’s work spans an eclectic and diverse range of genres and disciplines. In the classical contemporary sphere, she has been commissioned by leading artists such as The Bach Choir, Piatti Quartet and Imogen Whitehead. She is a prolific composer for dance, with stage works including the Ivors Composer Award-nominated Them (BalletBoyz), which premiered at Sadler’s Wells and went on to receive performances at Edinburgh International Festival and the Vaudeville Theatre in London’s West End. Other choreographers she has worked with include Shelley Maxwell, Craig Revel Horwood, Levan Peart and, most recently, Hannah Rudd and Jacob Wye, with whom she scored the short film The Silt of It in collaboration with filmmaker Ben Williams and English National Ballet Youth Company.

Her explorations of hybrid electro-acoustic languages have led to creative collaborations with immersive audio systems. Her groundbreaking track ‘Palomino’, for sampled double bass (Laurence Ungless) and kick drum, is installed at the audio company d&b’s ITEC (Immersive Technology Experience Centre) as a demo of its soundscape system, with 360-degree accompanying visuals by filmmaker John Minton (Portishead/High Flying Birds). As musical director and co-composer for England on Fire (BalletBoyz, Sadler’s Wells, 2024), she oversaw a hybrid score created for live ensemble and a specially installed d&b audiotechnik soundscape system.

Other works for media include creating a soundtrack for the Dress Codes exhibition at Kensington Palace (March to November 2025); co-writing The Whole Routine for performance artist Edmund Thomason which was featured at The Falstaff Project, Texas in early 2026; and writing internationally-broadcast music for media, including for adverts and television documentaries.

“Sublime and avant-garde” (The Independent), Charlotte is an intuitive and highly original orchestrator, exploring the intersection of contemporary orchestral palettes within a diverse range of other genres. She co-orchestrated a set for internationally acclaimed rock band Suede as part of their sold-out Southbank residency, performed by the award-winning Paraorchestra, with whom she frequently collaborates. Other examples include her realisation of The Last Time by electronic pioneer Pauline Oliveros, which received a performance at HollandFest, Het Concertgebouw, and Hannah Peel’s No.1 Classical Album The Unfolding (Real World Records).

As a saxophonist, Charlotte co-founded Over 100 Years of Women and the Saxophone, which launched at the World Saxophone Congress, SaxOpen, in Strasbourg and made its debut in the USA in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University in early 2020. She is also deeply passionate about the role of music in health and wellbeing settings, collaborating on outreach projects with organisations including English National Ballet, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Britten Pears Arts. Her massed ensemble work Convo premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 2019 in collaboration with Tri-Borough Music Hub, Royal Albert Hall and the Royal College of Music, and was awarded an Ivors Composer Award.

Charlotte studied at the Royal College of Music, London, with Mark-Anthony Turnage (composition) and Martin Robertson (saxophone).