​Derri Joseph Lewis is a prize-winning composer and sound-artist, writing music for concerts, stage-works and installations in Europe and America. His music has been performed by artists and ensembles including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Gould Piano Trio, bass-violist Liam Byrne, and the Ligeti Quartet. In 2020 he graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with first class honours, studying with Joseph Davies and Ceri Tippetts and receiving the Eifion Evans Memorial Prize and RWCMD Skills Award.

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Derri has a passion for choral music — in 2021-22, he will join the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain as part of its Young Composers Platform, workshopping new music for a cappella vocal ensembles. In 2020, Derri was also commissioned by the Corvus Consort as part of its #TwelveComposersComposing project in aid of Crisis UK’s Christmas Appeal.

 

Derri has explored song in both English and Welsh — his duet 'A Moment' is featured on Helen Charlston's 'Isolation Songbook,' released on Delphian Records. The duet was given its premiere at St Pancras Clocktower in a concert supported by City Music Foundation. Derri’s song cycle, ‘3 o Englynion y Misoedd’ (Calendar Songs) was commissioned by the Welsh Music Guild (Paul Mealor Bursary) and will be premiered by Jeremy Huw Williams and Paula Fan in the USA in the 2021-22 season.  His Cane fires from the cabin of a plane - a song cycle with words by American poet Emily Bishai - will be performed at the Ludlow English Song Weekend 2021. 

 

Derri has been awarded many prestigious prizes, bursaries and funds, including funding from Psappha to develop a new work with guitarist Tom McKinney, funding from the Swiss-European Mobility Programme (SEMP) to study with Kaspar Ewalds at Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK), a grant from Tŷ Cerdd to develop a children’s opera with Flatpack Opera, and the National Centre for Early Music's Young Composer Award 2019 in association with BBC Radio 3.