Dr Bushra El-Turk

Bmus (Hons), MMus, PhD

Composition Teacher

Born in London, Bushra El-Turk has written over 60 works for the concert hall, the stage, TV, and live art performance. Her work is often defined by the integration of musics and musicians from different cultural traditions and the compulsion to highlight and challenge socio-cultural issues. Her works blur written and improvisational elements, forbearing the influence of her Lebanese roots all the while leaning towards the theatrical, creating works that are “…ironic…”, “…arresting…” and of “limitless imagination.”

Selected by the BBC as one of the most inspiring 100 Women of today, she has written works for the London Symphony Orchestra (Sir Simon Rattle, François-Xavier Roth), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Pascal Rophé, Ben Gurnon), London Sinfonietta, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Latvian Radio Choir, and Atlas Ensemble, amongst others, and in 2018 received her BBC Proms debut. Performances have been at venues and festivals including the Lincoln Center (New York), Porgy and Bess (Vienna), Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna), Wiener Festwochen, Aldeburgh Festival, Helsinki Festival, Norwich and Norfolk 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).

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 (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 in 2023, and earned her the prestigious 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).

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 had already completed her BMus (Hons) and MMus with Distinction at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Julian Philips by 2006. She also recently acquired a TQUK Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Autism (RQF).

This season (2025/26), Bushra looks forward to composing music for the SWR Festspiele for cello (Lionel Martin), strings and electronics, a stage adaptation of Ka for percussion and strings for the Royal Ballet (London), and an opera for Lucerne Theatre for the Lucerne Festival ’26, while her Dutch National Opera production—OUM—continues its tour and a new record with NMC Label is released featuring her latest string quartet Three Tributes.

Bushra El-Turk is Artistic Director and leader of Ensemble Zar, a fresh and fearless cross-genre ensemble.

She has enjoyed teaching composition at all levels, most notably at the University of Birmingham, the National Youth Orchestra, and as founding director of Chelsea Music Academy. Research areas include contemporary composition, cross-arts and cross-cultural collaborations, and the integration of composition and improvisation. She has also mentored on young composer schemes including Ty Cerdd (Wales), London Mozart Players, National Concert Hall Ireland Creative Lab Programme, and NonClassical Associate Composers Scheme (London), and is Co-Director of The Alternative Conservatoire, a radical new educational initiative.

Bushra’s services to music have included being an adjudicator for the British Composer Awards (now Ivor Composer Awards), adjudicator for the Commonwealth Young Composer Awards, and 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. She has also written the foreword to the book Candid: Conversations on Women in the Music Industry by Sammy Stein.

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Bushra is published by Composers Edition Visit website

Faculties / departments: Junior Department