Teenage composer Amy Jerman has won a brand new national music making competition themed around birds – after being inspired by the starlings of Swanage in Dorset!
Amy, a 19 year old music student from Wareham and a young ambassador for Purbeck Youth Music, was named as one of three national winners in the inaugural Lark Music Making Competition, organised by Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
The prize-winning composition was played on BBC Radio Dorset before Amy was interviewed by breakfast show host Steve Harris
‘Cinematic and extremely well written’
Amy wrote the composition for piano after enjoying a weekend of jazz at the Swanage Jazz Festival – where she has performed for several years – and taking some time out to sit near the sea and listen to bird song.
Her work, a bittersweet solo piece raising awareness of the birds’ natural beauty and sudden decline, was described by the judges as ‘cinematic’ and ‘incredibly well written’, and picked up a prize of £1,000.
There is a chance that her work will be fully orchestrated and performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra along with that of the other two winners, which Amy says she would love to happen.
The other winners were Murmuration, a poetic solo harp performance capturing the swirling dance of starlings written by Llewella White from London, and Mind the Birds, a joyful work from guitarist Rob Johnston of Hampshire, who was inspired by a dawn chorus he heard while camping.
Amy took inspiration from Swanage in summer and all the birds around her
“Swanage is a really beautiful place”
Amy Jerman said:
“I wrote The Starling in July 2024 after I’d watched some performances at the Swanage Jazz Festival – if you play there you get a free pass to the weekend, so we go every year, listen to a lot of music and eat by the sea.
“Swanage is a really beautiful place with so much wildlife – I got the idea for the work while we were sitting in the fields above the coast and wrote it out the following day. My composition was partly inspired because I had just heard loads of jazz but also because of the birds around me.
“I had some random music lessons at the age of nine, but I was 14 before I actually played music seriously, on the saxophone. The choice of instrument was down to Lisa Simpson – The Simpsons was my favourite show, Lisa was my favourite character and obviously she plays saxophone!
“I got into music really quickly and started to play other instruments, listened to a lot of music and joined bands – a lot of bands, even before I could play properly, but they were really good to help you learn.
“I started composing because of Covid. I took GCSE music and we had to download all the things we needed because we couldn’t go to school. That included MuseScore to do the assignments and then I decided to write my own things to see what they sounded like.
“It definitely feels weird that my compositions might go places and do things, because to me it’s just me in my bedroom with a score writing notes.”
Amy playing her Starling piano composition, watched over by lucky mascot Wally the dodo
Playing carols on a freezing night
Amy has just finished her first year studying music at Southampton University, with thoughts of going on to study an MA in music therapy and follow that as a career while also composing music in her spare time.
She has already won a number of music writing competitions – her completed works include a double concerto for flute and bassoon, two orchestral rhapsodies, multiple solo piano pieces and two scores for short films.
In 2023, she was invited to Cambridge University after winning ‘Caius Explore’, a competition run by the university, for her composition for solo cello.
And in 2024, Amy won an international competition, Celebrate the Seasons, with an orchestral work she called Seasons which was performed three times in Indiana, USA, by the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, followed by success with a jazz piece she wrote for a MuseScore contest.
The Lark Music Making competition attracted 100 entries from musicians across the UK
“I’m always writing music”
Amy said:
“Seasons was mostly about the holiday season, with lots of sleigh bells in it which tends to make anything sound festive, so I made Christmas the primary component so that my piece starts and ends in winter.
“I started writing it in a Christmassy mood, didn’t get very far with it and left it, then later thought I would write the rest of it, and tried to evoke different seasons by writing the music in different ways, with little musical motifs in each season to link them all together.
“We played carols at Swanage bandstand that winter when it was below freezing at 8 o’clock on a December night, when your hands are freezing and you can’t even wear gloves because your hands get stuck to the saxophone.
“I’m always writing music, always looking for competitions to enter. I would like to be a music therapist and composer in the future – obviously composing full time is a difficult career, but hopefully I can mix both of them.
“Improvising and arranging is really important for therapy, and I would really love to do a job where music can help improve people’s lives and make them feel happier, whatever job title I end up with.”
Enyi Okpara, the BSO’s new Calleva assistant conductor, was one of the competition judges
“You can really hear jazz influences”
Her latest success, in the first ever Lark Music Making Competition, was judged by an expert panel including accomplished violinist Tania Davis and top conductor Enyi Okpara, who were deeply impressed by the calibre of entries received.
Enyi Okpara said:
“The Starling was a beautiful piece of music written from the heart. We were looking for a wide variety and interesting creative responses to the brief, which was to create a piece inspired by birds or bird song.
“What really struck me about Amy’s piece was the beautiful soundwell that she was able to create. She talked about being on the Swanage coastline and you can really really hear that meditative, luscious soundwell that she has created in quite a short space of time.
“Harmonically, I found it really interesting and convincing, you can really hear the jazz influences and overall it was a really well structured piece of music to listen to.
“I hope that The Starling, and the other two winners in this competition, will be picked up by the BSO to be performed in public if we can orchestrate them all.”
The BSO may get a chance in future to play The Starling – Amy would be delighted to arrange it for a full orchestra!
“AI doesn’t have a soul or feelings”
Amy currently plays in the Swanage Town Band and Swanage Big Band, is proficient on the saxophone, clarinet and piano, and also plays guitar and bass guitar.
She is a fan of both classical music and jazz, and has started playing regular jazz sessions in a local care home, choosing music that the residents remember from their younger days, like the Frank Sinatra favourite Fly Me to the Moon.
Amy is also a keen advocate for inclusion and accessibility in music, supporting composition software such as MuseScore which is both free and, Amy says, almost as good as expensive paid-for software.
Amy said:
“It is so much easier than writing a score out on paper and will play your music back to you – that used to sound quite robotic and strange, but it is much better now, although not as good as having real people play it.
“There is no AI involved – I have tried AI to see what it is like and although it was quite good, which is creepy, it doesn’t have a soul or feelings, so there was no emotion in the work it produced. I don’t worry too much about the future of music!”
The Purbeck Youth Orchestra’s mini big band was created by Amy Jerman
“We are so proud of her!”
Jay Buckle, of Purbeck Youth Music, said:
“We are so lucky to have Amy as a young ambassador for Purbeck Youth Music, she is an extremely talented and versatile young musician.
“Not only is she a composer and multi instrumentalist, she also enjoys working with young people to nurture and develop their musical talent, in addition to her degree studies at Southampton University.
“Amy recently created a new youth ensemble, the Purbeck Mini Big Band, directing their first performance at the end of June. We are so proud of her!”
Further information
- Listen to Amy’s composition on the BSO website
- Find out more about Purbeck Youth Music
