Biography        

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James Chan is a Hong Kong-born composer currently based in London. His music often inhabits a delicate and fragile sound world, and draws much inspiration from other art forms – from film to sculpture, with a predilection for the writings of Virginia Woolf and the paintings of Agnes Martin.

James is currently studying for an MMus at the Royal Academy of Music with Edmund Finnis and David Sawer. In 2020, he graduated from the ‘joint-course’ at the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music, where he studied with Gary Carpenter.

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In 2016 James was announced as a winner in the senior category of the BBC Inspire Young Composer's Competition. He has since worked with a number of other ensembles and players, including the Psappha Ensemble and the NYCGB Fellows, and his music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

More recently, he was chosen to be part of the London Symphony Orchestra Panufnik Scheme 2019; his piece Tanztheater was workshopped by the orchestra, conducted by Jack Sheen, in March 2021.