Meet our Emerging Professional Artists for 2026

Choral Leaders 

Gorgey Bennett 

Gorgey Bennett is a choral musician, teacher and performer based in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. She holds a BA in Popular Music and a PGCE from the University of Huddersfield graduating in 2022.  

Gorgey has been a member of Barnsley Youth Choir for 17 years and continues to sing and work with the choir, as Deputy Musical Director for the Intermediate Choir. She has travelled abroad extensively, performing and competing in international choral competitions around the world. These experiences have contributed to a strong understanding of musical excellence, teamwork, and the life-changing impact of high-quality performance opportunities for young people.  

Gorgey also works teaching KS3 music and running the school choir at a mainstream secondary school based in her hometown. Driven by a belief that every child deserves access to outstanding music education, Gorgey is particularly passionate about creating exceptional musical experiences for children living in disadvantaged areas. Her work is rooted in inclusion, aspiration, and using the power of music to inspire confidence and open doors. 

Anna Beresford 

Anna Beresford, based in Cardiff, is active as a freelance conductor and music educator. She is Musical Director of Caerphilly Community Chorus, the City of Newport Symphony Orchestra, and Tonyrefail Ladies Choir. Anna is currently the Trainee Conductor with the Welsh Chamber Orchestra, assisting Anthony Hose. In the 2025/26 season, she is conducting a new work, Nikkah, an opera in pop-up venues with Bradford Opera Festival, and working as Assistant Conductor on the Ivors Academy Award nominated opera Gresford: Up from Underground tour with NEW Sinfonia. Anna’s work spans professional performance, community engagement and education, with a particular focus broadening access to high-quality music-making and leading with precision, warmth and imagination. 

Past engagements include Assistant Chorus Director for the Royal Northern College of Music Chamber Choir in their 2023 BBC Proms performance of Ligeti’s Requiem, in collaboration with the Edvard Grieg Kor and London Philharmonic Chorus. She made her debut with Northern Ballet in Autumn 2022 as Cover and Assistant Conductor during their tour of The Little Mermaid by Sally Beamish. Anna won the first National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain’s Weston Conductors Competition in 2022, resulting in working as Associate Conductor and assistant to Guest Conductor, Martyn Brabbins. 

Anna studied Orchestral Conducting with Choral Conducting from the Royal Northern College of Music, where she gained an MMus with distinction. During this time, she worked with a wide range of college ensembles and collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Psappha Ensemble, and Chetham’s School of Music. 

Sheena Riyike Jibowu 

Sheena Jibowu read music at King’s College London, receiving piano lessons from Francesca Orlando at the Royal Academy of Music, whilst also being a choral scholar with the Choir of King’s College London and studying voice under Robert Rice.  

Sheena has always been passionate about music, especially for disadvantaged groups. During her undergraduate studies, she took up choral conducting and is now the musical director of the chapel of St Thomas Guy, King’s College London, as well as the King’s College London Music Society’s Sinfonietta Orchestra.  

She has also taken part in the Glover-Edward’s conducting course at the Royal Academy of Music with Sian Edwards, as well as the CIAC conducting course with Irina Walters. She is now pursuing a postgraduate degree in the Political Economy of Emerging Markets at King’s College London. Having completed a choral scholarship with St Martin-in-the-Fields, she is now excited to commence conducting fellowships with the Milton Keynes Chorale as well as National Youth Choir and is looking forward to the year ahead! 

Hattie Twigger-Ross 

Hattie Twigger-Ross is a soprano, conductor and singing teacher based in Guildford.  

She graduated in 2025 from Oxford University with a degree in music. Whilst at university, she sang in Merton College Choir, was conducting scholar for Schola Cantorum of Oxford (the university’s chamber choir), and assistant conductor of Oxford University Chorus.  

Hattie is currently a choral scholar at St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Saviour’s, Pimlico and teaches singing for Holy Trinity Church, Guildford and Sutton Music Trust, where she also runs a children’s choir.  

She is passionate about widening access to choral music and is especially excited to return to National Youth Choir having been a member as a teenager. 

Composers 

Evie Atkin 

Evie Atkin (she/her) is a composer, musical director, and performer based in London. As a composer, she has worked with ensembles such as BBC Concert Orchestra, ORA Singers and Exaudi, as well as soloists such as clarinettist Heather Roche and pianist Ben Smith. Her piece What Were You Wearing?, which was written in response to the Mary Simmerling poem of the same name, won the 2020 BBC Young Composer award.  

Evie’s music contains mesmerising, kaleidoscopic colours and driving rhythms that trip over themselves to punctuate lush textures that shimmer and shine. She paints rich, yet whimsical, landscapes that always feel familiar even at their most abstract moments and has been described by John Rutter as ‘someone who has a real feeling for sonority’.  

She studied at Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Julian Phillips, Laurence Crane and Hollie Harding and was generously supported by the Guildhall Scholarship Fund.  

Evie has collaborated extensively with British Youth Music Theatre as both a composer and a musical director and was delighted to be commissioned to write Choreomania, a new musical which premiered at the Birmingham Hippodrome in August 2025.  

Maki Gajic Murata

Maki is a composer, accompanist, conductor, and an enthusiastic educator.  

In 2025, she completed a Master's in Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and learnt with the fabulous Hollie Harding. Maki currently works at a leading school in London where she shares her love of music with great gusto!  

Recent works have been written for Exaudi, Plus Minus, Gloucestershire Youth Wind Band, and the Gaia Singers.  

Maki’s work is grounded in autobiography and integrating aspects of her heritage and identity. She is passionate about creating accessible contemporary music for amateur and young musicians and making them excited about new music. 

Mary Offer  

One of Classic FM’s Rising Stars 2025, Mary is an award-winning composer and conductor whose work has been performed by The Riot Ensemble, The Nash Ensemble, The Choir of Jesus College Cambridge, and CHROMA, at venues including the Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall, New York.  

Mary takes a keen interest in exploring new sounds and perspectives through collaboration with writers, artists and performers and founded a New Music Festival to promote new music at the University of Cambridge. She  is particularly passionate about choral and vocal music, recently receiving commissions from The Choir of Jesus College Cambridge, The Ripieno Choir and The Choir of All Saints, Fulham and sings with the Chamber Choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields and as a Choral Scholar with the West London Chorus.  

As a conductor, she has been Musical Director of her own opera with Cambridge University Opera Society and MD of an original five-star musical at the Edinburgh Fringe.  

Mary read Music at Jesus College, Cambridge and MMus Composition at The Royal Academy of Music, where she graduated with Distinction and was awarded the Bertie Douglas Haywood Award. She is now a Junior Fellow in Composition at the Guildhall School and Associate Conductor of The Ripieno Choir. 

Emma Pascoe 

In 2025, Emma Pascoe had five premieres of her work, including commissions, with Opus 48 (Oxford), Inner Voices (London), the Sitwell Singers (Derby), the choir of All Saints' Church, Putney, and the Thallein Ensemble (Birmingham). She is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Composition at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, under the tutelage of Howard Skempton and Ed Bennett. As part of the degree so far, she has also written for cellist Robin Michael, Orchestra of the Swan, Mary Dullea & Darragh Morgan, and the Mela Guitar Quartet. 

Emma was commissioned by the ORA Singers and Suzi Digby OBE as part of their inaugural Graduate Composers programme in 2024, and has joined their 100 Commissions Catalogue, after a world premiere performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. In 2023, she made her radio debut on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship with the London-based youth choir Inner Voices (dir. Ralph Allwood MBE / Ed Watkins). 

Emma graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London, with a Bachelor of Music degree in 2020. She was selected to be a Picture Gallery Composer-in-Residence at the college in 2019, which involved writing for the renowned Royal Holloway Chapel Choir and their director, Rupert Gough. With guidance from Samantha Fernando, Nina Whiteman, and John Traill, her music was workshopped by CHROMA and performed by the Jane Holloway Choir. She assisted Nathan James Dearden as the inaugural Young Associate Conductor of the Royal Holloway New Voices Consort and New Music Collective, which collaborated with Judith Weir in 2020. She was founder and co-manager of the Royal Holloway Conductors’ Collective, which included tuition from Rebecca Miller and Neil Ferris. She also conducted three premieres as part of the Festival of Contemporary Music for All 2020. She is currently taught by Daniele Rosina at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. 

She is founder and director of the 'Songs Away From Time' project and was a soprano in Opus 48 from 2021 to 2024. 

As a neurodivergent musician, Emma is currently researching neurodiversity in contemporary classical music and its compositional process. 

Our Partners 

We are grateful to the following organisations for their kind grant support, partnership and advocacy: 
Steinberg Media Technologies (Dorico), Stainer & Bell, CHK Foundation, Scops Arts Trust, Garrick Charitable Trust, Vaughan Williams Foundation, NMC Recordings, Britten Pears Arts, ABRSM and AOTOS