Bushra El-Turk - Composer

Bushra El-Turk (b. London, 10th November 1982) writes music that is visceral, vibrant, and theatrical. Her sound world pulses with the collision and melding of diverse traditions—Middle Eastern maqam intertwines with modernist textures, improvisation disrupts and reshapes notation, and the boundaries between concert hall, stage, live performance art and the wider world dissolve into bold, unflinching narratives. Each work bears her unique imprint: deeply grounded in her Lebanese heritage yet fearlessly exploratory, confronting societal norms and revealing stories too often silenced. To experience Bushra’s music is to step into a charged space—raw, arresting, intimate, and transformative. 

Earthy drones offset by glittering shards of color, dense polyphonic textures pierced by piercing, haunting solos. It is both ancient and new, a living dialogue between worlds, voices, and perspectives.

Selected by the BBC as one of the most inspiring 100 Women of today, her pieces have been performed by the London Symphony Orchestra,  the BBC Proms, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Opera House, London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), Manchester Camerata, Opera Holland Park, National Opera Studio, OrchestUtopica (Portugal), Athelas Sinfonietta (Denmark) Hermes Ensemble (Belgium), Orchestre National de Lorraine (France), Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Latvian Radio Choir, Ensemble Saraband (Germany), Ensemble Aventure (Germany) Atlas Ensemble (Netherlands), Ensemble Zerafin, Orkest de ereprijs (Holland), Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, percussionist Vivi Vassileva, mezzo Wallis Giunta and flautist Wissam Boustany. Performances have been at venues and festivals including the Lincoln Centre (New York), Porgy and Bess (Vienna) Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna), Wiener Festwochen, Aldeburgh Festival, MusikProtokol Festival (Gratz), Norwich and Norfolk Festival, Helsinki Festival, Deutsche Oper Haus (Berlin), Montpellier Opera House, Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), Bridgewater Hall (Manchester), Birmingham Symphony Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, the Southbank and the Barbican (London). 

In 2017, she completed an AHRC funded PhD in Musical Composition at the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Michael Zev Gordon where she explored the integration of Middle-Eastern and Western art music. She'd already completed her BMus (Hons) and MMus at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Julian Philips by 2006.

2019 saw the world premiere of Tmesis for Symphony Orchestra, performed by the BBCSO at the Dubai Opera House at the BBC Proms Opening night. Bushra was excited to be commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra again to perform Tuqus for multi ability orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle which was shortlisted for an Ivor Composer Award in 2020, a London Sinfonietta commission and a piece for Studio Dan, commissioned by the MusikProtokol festival in Gratz. In 2022, her residency as a composer at LOD continued with an R&D of a major new work exploring grief, in partnership with Manchester Camerata and the Mozart scholar Simon O’Keefe (University of Sheffield) using Mozart’s unfinished Requiem as the source material. Bushra was also one of the main featured composers for the Aldeburgh Festival in June 2022.

Bushra has three operas under her belt -two with women’s stories at the centre - Silk Moth (2015) about ‘honour’ killings (receiving a True Honour Award in 2016) and Woman at Point Zero Opera (2021/22), commissioned by LOD Musiektheater and premiered at Aix en Provence Opera Festival in July 2022, touring Belgium's cities in April 2023 as part of All Arias Festival, Luxembourg, Valencia, and London's Royal Opera House in June 2023. Woman at Point Zero won the Fedora Prize for Opera Innovation in 2020, the Music Theatre Now Prize 2023 and won her the prestigieous Ivor Novello Award for Best Stage Work Composition. The opera most recently toured to the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) where Bushra was one of the featured composers at Akademie Zweite Moderne with a performance by Klangforum Wien in June 2024. Her third opera - OUM - A Son's Quest for his Mother -  was commissioned by Dutch National Opera for the Opera Forward Festival 2025 and is now on tour - next stop Barbican, London (2nd October 2025).

Her current and forthcoming projects include a commission for Lucerne Theatre for Lucerne Festival August 2026, a cello concerto commissioned by SWR Schwetzingen Festival (Germany), a commission for the European Concert Halls Organisation (ECHO) touring twenty major concert halls across Europe, and an upcoming stage adaptation of Ka for Solo Percussion and Strings in collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor at the Royal Ballet and Opera. 

Bushra enjoys teaching composition at all levels. Research areas include contemporary composition, cross-arts and cross cultural collaborations and the integration of composition and improvisation. She currently teaches at Royal College of Music Junior Department. She has also mentored on young composer schemes including Tŷ Cerdd (Wales), National Concert Hall Ireland Creative Lab Programme, London Mozart Players and NonClassical Associate Composers Scheme (London) and is co-director of The Alternative Conservatoire.

Bushra's services to music have included being an adjudicator for the British Composer Awards (now Ivor Composer Awards), and adjudicator for the Commonwealth Young Composer Awards and, also, member of the board of directors at the Independent Society of Musicians (2018-2021). She is now on the board of trustees for the ISM Trust.

Bushra's music is published by Composers Edition and is artistic director of Ensemble Zar. 

FEBRUARY 2026

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