Toby Young

Toby Young is Professor of Composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His work explores the intersection of music, technology, and performance to create innovative formats for classical music that generate new modes of storytelling, participation, and cultural engagement. He is currently Principal Investigator of Immersive Opera (2024–32), a £1.4 million UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship that develops new approaches to operatic storytelling using spatial audio, extended reality (XR), and interactive design. Through partnerships with the Royal Ballet and Opera, English National Opera, d&b audiotechnik, and Punchdrunk Enrichment, the project investigates how emerging technologies can reshape emotional connection, audience access, and production models for the opera industry. Previous funded projects include the NERC Impact project Raise a Voice, which explored how collective music making can support cultural understanding, empathy, and public engagement with environmental change, and the AHRC-funded Embodied Voices network examining the ethics and politics of representation in contemporary performance, which resulted in a special issue of the British Journal of Aesthetics.

His most recent book Opera Remixed (Cambridge University Press, 2026) traces the rise of operatic hybridity, examining how crossover genres such as popera and musical theatre challenge classical vocal paradigms and unsettle established operatic conventions. It presents a case study of arias reimagined for TikTok as a blueprint for how opera might embrace innovation for a contemporary audience. Other publications include the Cambridge Companion to Composition (2024), the Oxford Handbook of Time in Music (2022), chapters for Oxford University Press and Routledge, and articles in journals including Cultural Trends, British Music Journal, Transposition, and Tempo.

Toby’s Ivor-nominated creative work spans classical, commercial, and immersive sectors. His classical music is published by Oxford University Press and has been performed internationally, with more than one hundred commissions including the London Symphony Orchestra, Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, and New College Oxford. As a commercial music producer, he has collaborated with Chase and Status, Duran Duran, Florence Welch, Kano, Ellie Goulding, and the Rolling Stones, with several chart-topping releases broadcast across BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, 6Music, and 1Xtra. His immersive sound installations include commissions for the Design Museum (Blitz), the National Trust (Origin), and Porsche (Dream Electric at Outernet London).

Toby was formerly Music Supervisor for Punchdrunk from 2019 to 2024, shaping the sound worlds of productions including The Burnt City and the BAFTA-nominated The Third Day for Sky and HBO. He previously worked on the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Audience of the Future programme developing VR and spatial audio experiences that placed audiences inside the orchestra and examined how digital platforms could extend the reach of live symphonic performance. He is also an established producer of opera and orchestral recording and has led projects for the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Chineke, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, English Touring Opera, and Grange Park Opera. His film credits include La Voix Humaine for BBC One, The Turn of the Screw for Opera North and Marquee TV, and La bohème for Finite Films.

Toby holds a doctorate in Music and Philosophy from the University of Oxford and degrees in Music and in Music Composition from the University of Cambridge. After his doctoral studies, he was the Carolyn and Franco Gianturco Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College Oxford and a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Guildhall. He also held a Visiting Research Fellowship in Philosophy at the University of Bristol funded by the Wellcome Trust and taught at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and the University of Westminster, where he received an award for teaching excellence from the Students’ Union.

Toby is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. As Research Lead in Digital Performance and Production at Guildhall, he contributes to strategy in areas including knowledge exchange, intellectual property, and AI. He is a non-executive director for several technology-led music ventures and sits on editorial and peer review boards across the UK and Europe. He is a trustee of the record label Nonclassical and of British Youth Opera, and serves on the board of New Opera Dialogues.

www.theothertoby.com