Royal Holloway composer Gavin Higgins has won a prestigious Ivors Composer Award for his trombone concerto, The Book of Miracles.

The annual Ivors Composer Awards (previously known as the British Composer Awards) recognise craft in classical, jazz, contemporary, and sound art composition. Works which received their UK premiere in the past year are eligible for nomination across twelve categories.

The winners were announced at a ceremony at the British Museum in London on Wednesday 4 December 2019.

Higgins, a current PhD student in the Department of Music, won in the Orchestral category for The Book of Miracles. The piece premiered in February 2019 at the Barbican, in a performance given by trombonist Helen Vollam and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Royal Holloway's Professor Mark Bowden was also nominated in the Chamber Ensemble category, for his piece Sapiens, while Geoff Hannan – a former PhD student in Music – won in the Choral category with Pocket Universe, a work for eight solo voices.

Congratulations all!