Luke Bedford

Who is Luke Bedford?

Luke Bedford is a British composer.

Bedford was born in Wokingham, Berkshire, where he was educated at St Crispin's School. He studied composition with Edwin Roxburgh and Simon Bainbridge at the Royal College of Music, and won the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 2000. This was followed by post-graduate study with Simon Bainbridge at the Royal Academy of Music. In 2007 Bedford signed to Universal Edition London.

Awards include the 2000 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize for composers under 29 and the 2004 BBC Radio 3 Listeners' Award at the British Composer Awards. In 2007, Bedford became the first compositional recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Artists' Award since David Sawer in 1993. 2007 also saw him receive a nomination for the Royal Philharmonic Society large-scale composition prize, for his song cycle Or Voit Tout En Aventure. In 2008, Bedford received his second British Composer Award for his 2007 orchestral work Wreathe.

On the 24 January 2008, director of the Wigmore Hall John Gilhooly announced Bedford as the venue's first ever Composer-in-Residence.