Full bio
Bethan Morgan-Williams (b. 1992) is a composer whose work explores how systems and intuition interact to generate musical material. Her music plays with expectation and variance, fostering co-creative frameworks and reflecting the restless energy of 21st-century life. Described as “marvellously oblique and obscure” [5against4] while being “rooted in something ancient and folky” [The Telegraph], her work balances structural complexity with physicality, humour, and moments of heightened musical presence.
Central to Bethan’s practice is material-drift: a transformative process through which musical ideas evolve significantly from their initial conceptual state, becoming more fully themselves over time. Rather than resolving friction, her music often leans into it, tracing how competing materials coexist, collide, and negotiate space. Collaboration is fundamental to her approach; she works closely with performers to allow musical material to emerge through dialogue, experimentation, and embodied knowledge.
Her music has been commissioned and performed by internationally acclaimed soloists including Carl Rosman, Antoine Tamestit, Colin Currie, Jennifer Johnston, and Ben Goldscheider, and by ensembles such as ensemble mosaik, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Riot Ensemble, Psappha, and Ensemble 10/10. Orchestral performances include the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, with broadcasts across Europe and North America.
Bethan’s work has been recognised through awards and residencies including a Darmstadt Stipend, a Leverhulme scholarship, the Susan Bradshaw Composer Prize (Royal Philharmonic Society), and the Christopher Brooks Composition Prize (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra). She has participated in schemes such as the LSO Panufnik Scheme, has been shortlisted for ISCM World Music Days and a Paul Hamlyn Award, and was appointed an honorary Associate Member of the Royal Northern College of Music in 2025.
Short bio
Bethan Morgan-Williams (b. 1992) is a composer whose work explores the interplay between systems and intuition, creating music that balances structural complexity with physicality, humour, and heightened presence. Her music often leans into friction, tracing how competing materials coexist and evolve through a process she describes as “material-drift.” Collaboration is central to her practice, with musical ideas emerging through close dialogue with performers. Her work has been commissioned and performed by internationally renowned soloists, ensembles, and orchestras, and recognised through major awards, scholarships, and residencies.
Education
Bethan is the current holder of the Jonathan Harvey Scholarship and is pursuing a PhD at the University of Huddersfield, researching collaborative methodologies in composition. From 2017 to 2019, Bethan pursued a Masters degree in composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where she was awarded a scholarship to study with Diderik Wagenaar, Peter Adriaansz, Calliope Tsoupaki, and Richard Barrett; she also continued her violin studies with Theodora Geraets. Her research focussed on the listeners’ experience of elapsed duration during music listening. In 2010, Bethan gained a scholarship to study composition with Gary Carpenter and violin with Leland Chen at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 2001, at the age of nine, Bethan was offered a scholarship to Wells Cathedral School, one of the five specialist music schools in Great Britain, where she studied violin with Catherine Lord, viola with Philip Dukes, piano with Olena Shvetsova, and jazz piano with Dhevdhas Nair.
And before?
Bethan started playing the violin when she was three years old, studying with the late Derek Jackson of Kerry, Newtown. She grew up in mid-Wales playing folk music and accompanying local country dancing, and later took up piano and singing lessons. Bethan won her first solo competition, for under-16 instrumentalists, when just five years old, following this with successes at competitions across Wales, including the Under-12 and Under-15 String Solo classes at the Urdd National Eisteddfod in 2002 and 2003, and the Under-16 String Solo class at the Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales, while still only thirteen. Following on from membership of the North Powys Youth Orchestra – where she led the 2nd violin section from the age of six – and the National Children’s Orchestra from the age of seven, she was a member of the National Children’s Chamber Orchestra in 2005 and the National Youth Chamber Orchestra in 2006. Bethan made her concerto debut – with Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor – at the age of fourteen, with Kenneth Woods and the Wrexham Symphony Orchestra. Her training as a classical musician has always sat alongside her various other interests – inc. folk, jazz, electronic and contemporary music, having appeared on stage with ensembles ranging from the London Concert Orchestra to the Grammy-winning funk collective Snarky Puppy.
Bethan gained early recognition as a composer too, winning the Under-15 Composition class at the Urdd National Eisteddfod in 2004, and with string works performed at Wells, Colston Hall, the University of Bristol, and the Royal Northern College of Music in 2005/6.