Precious Akindele is a composer, pianist and organist. She’s been studying at the BRIT School, whose alumni include Adele, Amy Winehouse and Jessie J, and will begin studying composition at Trinity Laban in September. She was featured playing her own composition on Channel 4’s The Piano.

As a classical composer, Precious tells Remain Composed she’s enjoyed learning from her pop peers at the BRIT School, who often put their own emotions, vulnerabilities into their music.

Precious sometimes writes music sitting at her piano, and sometimes on the sofa. She says it can be a full body experience, which has occasionally involved dancing to music in her head.

Precious says she uses graphical notation when writing scores, which give performers freedom. This has included depicting dynamics with the thickness of lines or sound quality with colour gradients. Precious is visually impaired, which she says makes her think about things differently.

Frederick Viner is a composer, pianist and Youtuber based in York. He tells Remain Composed that parameters are his friends when composing, and if a commissioner hasn’t provided any, he quickly works some out for himself. Frederick describes his music as abstract, saying it’s not normally about anything in particular.

Frederick says watching videos on YouTube while growing up helped him discover a range of music. Now, he makes videos and has more than 28,000 subscribers. He says he tries to steer viewers towards lesser-known composers.

Frederick says music is at an interesting juncture, and asks how we can reconcile a traditional 'museum culture' with a culture of championing the new.

Frederick discusses the influence of 20th Century composer György Ligeti, and explains the complicated challenge he set himself of writing a Ligeti-style ‘tempo fugue’. (Here’s Frederick’s video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22N7ykqgceQ)

Frederick also tells Remain Composed he’s been helping the ABRSM put together new creative musicianship qualifications.

Sally Beamish has written nearly 300 works including concertos, ballets, vocal and chamber music. She says music is how she expresses her emotions. Much of her output focuses on the environment, the sea and other elements. She says that after having a miscarriage in 1994, writing a cello solo contributed to her overcoming her grief.

Sally studied the viola, but tells Remain Composed that she's never played a single note of any of her three concertos for the instrument. However, after studying with a violin-maker, Sally's daughter came back with a viola for her. She now plays her own music and other people's.

Sally says she suffers from imposter syndrome all the time, hearing voices questioning her ideas and originality. Sally says she overcame a particularly difficult period of creative block by taking up writing (words) and attending group classes.

Sally also gives Remain Composed a glimpse into her compositional process, including how she writes everything using notation software, and she describes how the Pomodoro Technique helps her maintain focus.