Kristina Arakelyan

From a debut aged just 15 as winner of the BBC Young Composers’ Competition, Kristina Arakelyan has forged a unique role in British music. With the ABRSM 2023–2024 grade two syllabus featuring her piano Daydream, and her first solo disc as composer and pianist Dreamland issued on Apple Music’s Platoon label, she is acknowledged as a performer and educator of increasing stature. A former postgraduate choral scholar at St Peter’s College, Oxford, she acquired an early love of choral music from singing in Apostolic Church choirs in her native Armenia, a passion later nurtured through studies at the Purcell School, the Royal Academy of Music, Oxford University and King’s College London. Of her outstanding unaccompanied choral works, Stainer & Bell are proud to publish her Wordsworth setting I wandered lonely as a cloud, written for the voices of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, and Two Lovesongs, one to words by Christina Rossetti, the other to the composer’s own text – further evidence of her formidable range of gifts.

Kristina has worked with distinguished collaborators including the BBC Singers, Britten Pears Arts, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. For trumpet player Alison Balsom she wrote Modal Reeds and, for organist Anna Lapwood, Star Fantasy, included in the anthology Gregoriana and available separately for piano.  Six Brass Cats for B flat brass instruments and piano, and the forthcoming piano collection Five-a-Day further extend the reach of her output for young people, rewarding to play, and like all her work empowered without compromise by a clear vision of music’s power and purpose.