Courtney Cousins : Associate Artist
Courtney Cousins is an Australian composer and musician based in
London. With a deep love of literature, she is particularly drawn
to music as a form of storytelling, using it to communicate
challenging ideas and inspire new ways of thinking. She has
composed for a wide range of media, including vocal, choral,
instrumental, and electroacoustic works. In 2022, she graduated
from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with a Bachelor of Music
(Composition) with First Class Honours and in 2024, an Advanced
Diploma of Arts in English with Distinction at the University of
New England. She is currently on scholarship at the Royal Academy
of Music, London, studying a Master of Music (Composition) with
Edmund Finnis.
In 2025, Courtney's 35-minute chamber opera Echo received its UK
premiere at the Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music,
as part of the Students Create Festival. The work originated from
Daphne, a commission from Ensemble Offspring in April 2023 for
voice, flute, and marimba, exploring women's stories in Ovid's
Metamorphoses. Echo was first premiered in June 2023 by Concordia
Ensemble at Pitt St Uniting Church, Sydney.
Other 2025 projects include the 20-minute piano opera Boxed In,
created with Berlin-based librettist Alexia Peniguel, and
Breathe, a six-minute work for the London CoMA Ensemble. She also
composed we search for panacea, a ten-minute string orchestra
work featuring soloist Yixuan Ren, workshopped at the Royal
Academy. Upcoming projects for late 2025 and 2026 include a
choral song cycle to be conducted by Kwankaew Ruangtrakool, a
violin-flute-piano trio with Royal College of Music students, a
string work for a film by London director Jack Heller, a
flute-viola-harp trio commissioned by the Royal Academy for
performance in November, and an orchestral piece to be
workshopped at the Academy in October.
In 2024, Courtney was selected for Ensemble Offspring's Hatched
Composer Intensive, where her chamber work so let me save you
premiered in the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House. The same year,
Musicáno Fusion Ensemble commissioned sundown, an orchestral work
for voice and folk instruments including the Ukrainian bandura
and Chinese pipa, premiered at Sydney Town Hall. She has also
written extensively for choir, with commissions from the Sydney
University Graduate Choir, Central Coast Choral, and St Stephen's
Uniting Church Choir.
Alongside composing, Courtney is a conductor, currently studying
with Jonathan Mann. She has worked on opera and oratorio projects
with the student-led Concordia Ensemble in Sydney, including
Mozart's Don Giovanni (2023), Dido and Aeneas (Concordia 2022),
and Bach's Easter Oratorio (2024), and was Choir Leader for the
Australian Girls Choir in 2024. She continues to pursue her love
of flute performance and choral singing in London.
Biography provided by the composer — current to August 2025