Born in Cardiff in 1969, Julian Philips studied music at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is one of Britain’s most versatile composers, working across song, chamber and orchestral music, opera and ballet. His music has been performed at major festivals and venues including the BBC Proms, Tanglewood Music Festival, Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne and Wigmore Hall, by international artists including Evelyn Glennie, Gerald Finley, Sir Thomas Allen, the Vertavo String Quartet and BBC orchestras.

Recent projects include Melodys of Earth and Sky (2022) released on NMC Recordings, The Country of Larks (2021) for tenor, horn and piano, commissioned for Oxford International Song Festival, and an opera for children, Henny Penny (2020). In 2022, Julian Philips was featured composer at the Presteigne Festival, including the premiere of Looking West, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vaughan Williams.

A vital force in education, Philips is the Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he was made Honorary Fellow in 2007 and conferred a Professorship in 2014. He has established both a new Masters Programme in Opera-Making & Writing and a Doctoral Composer-in-Residence scheme in association with the Royal Opera House, which supported the creation of Philip Venables 4.48 Psychosis and Oliver Leith's Last Days. Forthcoming works include an orchestral song cycle for baritone Gerald Finley, and a new oboe quintet, Through Silence, commissioned by the Wigmore Hall.