Josephine Stephenson

Josephine Stephenson (b. 1990) is a French-British composer, arranger and performer working across different genres and scenes. Described as ‘a bewitching combination of dissonance and sweet-toned cantabile’ (Bachtrack), her music has been commissioned by institutions such as the BBC, Radio France, Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Spitalfields Music, Nonclassical and Arcal Lyrique among others. It has been performed by London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Aurora Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva, 12 Ensemble, s t a r g a z e, Tenebrae, the Maîtrise de Radio France, The Hermes Experiment, Explore Ensemble, tenor Allan Clayton and guitarist Laura Snowden.

Her promising first orchestral piece, Abend, commissioned and recorded by Harry Ogg and Sinfonia d’Amici in 2014, was described as displaying ‘delicate textures’ and a ‘kaleidoscopic orchestration’ (The Classical Source). Of her 2015 forty-part short choral piece for the last night of the Bristol Proms in 2015, if only, director Tom Morris said it ‘seemed to paint the volume of air in the space with musical brush-strokes of precise detail’. Les Constellations – Une théorie, her first chamber opera in collaboration with theatre company L'Éventuel Hérisson Bleu, produced by Miroirs Étendus and Opéra de Lille, on a libretto by Antoine Thiollier, was presented at the Bateau-Feu in Dunkerque in 2016. Between the war and you, her 2017 song cycle for The Hermes Experiment on words by Ben Osborn and premiered at Spitalfields Festival was lauded by The Times as ‘music to arrest the ears and stop the heart’. 

As part of the programme Writing the Future, she wrote Shuffle for London Sinfonietta in 2019. The same year NARCISSE, her second chamber opera written and staged by Marion Pellissier and commissioned by Arcal Lyrique, premiered at the Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, before going on to tour extensively in France in the five following years, including at Opéra de Rennes. Also in 2019, following the premiere of Une saison en enfer for tenor and string orchestra by Allan Clayton and Aurora Orchestra at the Wigmore Hall, Bachtrack said of her music that it ‘displays an assurance beyond her years’. The piece was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award. 

Into the Wreck for choir and narrator was commissioned by Tenebrae in 2021 for their 20th Anniversary programme ‘Humanity & Liberty’, and received several performances with actress Juliet Stevenson, culminating at the Wigmore Hall with The Times describing the music as ‘hugely evocative and always beautiful’. The piece was later recorded by the BBC Singers for International Women’s Day on BBC Radio 3 in 2024.

Stephenson’s work is nurtured by an interest in investigating the intersections of so-called ‘high’ and ‘popular’ cultures and creating bridges between different musical worlds. She enjoys regular collaborations with film and theatre makers (La Raffinerie, FellSwoop, L’Éventuel Hérisson Bleu) as well as songwriters and bands (Damon Albarn, Arctic Monkeys, Daughter, to name a few). With the Berlin-based ensemble s t a r g a z e she created new arrangements for the BBC David Bowie Prom in 2016 and for concerts with Lisa Hannigan in 2018. In 2021, the album 'Ex:Re with 12 Ensemble', a collaboration with the singer Elena Tonra and the string ensemble 12 Ensemble, came out on the labels 4AD and Glassnote Records. In 2022, she arranged songs of Damon Albarn's for the project 'Symphonic Loops' with the Royal Concergebouw Orchestra, as well as songs of Benjamin Biolay's for his symphonic tour across France (Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National d'Île de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg).

She was composer in residence at the Opera Grand Avignon in 2021-2023, which led to the premiere of her first large-scale opera, Three Lunar Seas, in Spring 2023. The same year she won an Ivor Novello Award for her voice and guitar piece Comme l’espoir/you might all disappear, commissioned by Héloïse Werner for her debut solo album ‘Phrases’. Recent premieres include KAGUYA - The Daughter Tree at Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo, a 30-minute music theatre piece in collaboration with Japanese choreographer Kaiji Moriyama and writer Ben Osborn. Two new works, In Time Like Air for Ensemble Intercontemporain, and Rest(e) for I Giardini and Fiona McGown, featured in the 2024 edition of the Festival Présences at Radio France in Paris, dedicated to the music of Steve Reich.