Photo credit: James Bellorini

Composers Lucy Armstrong and Alex Ho have been selected to take part in Glyndebourne’s “Balancing the Score” program.

“Balancing the Score” is a three-year-long, part-time residency that supports up-and-coming composers from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. The composers chosen will live and work in the Glyndebourne opera scene. Participants will also receive an annual bursary and have access to a research & development fund.

Starting this month, Armstrong and Ho will begin mentoring with Glyndebourne’s Artistic Director, Stephen Langridge. The two will attend rehearsals and performances for Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” which opens the 2023 Glyndebourne Festival on May 19. Following the opera, Armstrong and Ho will be commissioned to compose chamber music that will be featured in Glyndebourne’s autumn season, take part in Glyndebourne’s Jerwood Pit Perfect development scheme, and much more.

Lucy Armstrong is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and the Julian Philips at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Last year she was one of five composers who collaboratively scored “Gods of the Game,” an opera about football and corruption commissioned by Sky Arts which was broadcast live. Armstrong has composed opera with and for the Royal Opera House, Bergen National Opera, and Grange Park Opera. She also has a long list of choral and saxophone works.

British-Chinese composer Alex Ho is an Artist-in-Residence at Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier and Associate Composer at Oxford Lieder Festival. Many of Ho’s works have been performed and/or commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, Royal Opera House, Het Concertgebouw, National Opera Studio, Music Theatre Wales, and the London Sinfonietta. His (anti-)opera “Untold” won the FEDORA Opera Prize in 2022. Ho is also the co-director of Tangram, a collective of composers and performers of Chinese and western instruments.

Alums of Glyndebourne’s “Balancing the Score” program are Anna Appleby, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Cecilia Livingston, and Ailie Robertson.