The UK’s Future Leaders Fellowship Announces Winner

Dr. Toby Young has won the £1.4 million fellowship, which will help fund his research project “Immersive Opera”

Dr. Toby Young is a Professor of Composition at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama specializing in operatic and vocal music. He is also the author of "The Cambridge Companion to Composition," published in May 2024. 

Endowed with £1.4 million, the UK Research & Innovation department’s (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship will support Young’s research project “Immersive Opera.” 

This fellowship is part of UKRI’s initiative for exceptional leaders in research and is the largest research-related funding award that the Guildhall School has received to date.

With the fellowship, Young will continue to investigate immersive performance practices and technologies in opera to develop new ways of staging and creating opera for the digital age. A major output of his project will be a series of training resources and workshops allowing opera companies to implement immersive opera in the future.

Among his collaborators will include the leading immersive theater company Punchdrunk Enrichment, and partners from British Youth Opera, National Opera Studio, Opera North, Royal Ballet & Opera, and Scottish Opera. 

Young will also explore the possibilities of Guildhall School’s Extended Reality (XR) technology suite for opera. Supported by Dan Shorten, the Creative Director at Guildhall Live Events, Young will create new operatic works using spatial audio, audio-mapping, and visual and haptic XR interfaces designed for interactive storytelling. 

The objectives of Young’s research include co-designing with project partners; creating a forum for opera theorists, creative practitioners, performers, and technologists; collecting audience data and impact measurement; sharing the project results with the industry; as well as developing training resources and delivering workshops for real-world implementation of immersive opera. 

Young will also bring his experience as the Music Supervisor of Punchdrunk, and composer of soundtracks to TV and stage works including BAFTA-nominated productions for HBO and Sky Arts. He has further created recordings for top ensembles and artists and was a creative lead with the Philharmonia Orchestra’s “Audience of the Future” project to create orchestral and operatic experiences in 360º video and site-specific audio.

“Opera is a powerful and emotionally compelling artform, but as a sector, we are facing significant challenges around perceived relevance, accessibility, and financial and environmental sustainability,” Young said in the press release. “Working together with the opera community, this project will develop and test innovative approaches to operatic performance and composition that enhance our existing traditions rather than try and reinvent them. I am so grateful to UKRI and Guildhall School for this opportunity, and I can’t wait to get started!”

“I’m absolutely delighted that Dr Toby Young has been announced as a UKRI Future Leaders fellow, and excited about the potential this holds for the future of immersive opera,” added Guildhall School’s principal Jonathan Vaughan. “Guildhall School is proud to champion world-leading research that enables artists to explore fundamental questions about the creative arts. This particular project is the latest development in our commitment to contemporary opera making, which also includes a dedicated Masters programme in Opera Making and Writing, and one which draws on the cutting-edge XR technology we hold at Guildhall. Congratulations to Toby!”