Phillip Cooke

Phillip is a contemporary classical composer from the Lake District, currently Professor of Music at the University of Aberdeen. His works have been performed in most of the leading cathedrals and churches in the UK and have been performed by, amongst others, the BBC Singers and The Sixteen. As of 2011 his choral works have been published by Novello and Schott. In 2012 he was a winner of the ‘Musica Sacra International Composers Competition 2012’ which led to performances in Poland and Lithuania, in 2016 he won the Gesualdo Six Composition Prize for his motet Judas Mercator Pessimus, in 2017 his anthem For He is Our Peace won the Tenth Annual Anthem Competition in Worcester, Massachusetts and in 2020 his work Ave Maria, mater Dei won the ORTUS prize. His work has regularly been premiered and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and has also recently been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Classic FM. A CD of his choral works performed by the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge and Onyx Brass was released to great acclaim on Regent Records in April 2014, and the CD of The Eternal Ecstasy (again performed by Selwyn) including his motet of the same name reached the classical charts top 10 in August 2015. In 2017, his work The World on Fire featured on a number one in the classical charts performed by the Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford. There are currently eight commercial recordings available featuring his music.