Composition
“Jamie Powe is a multi-faceted artist; conductor, composer and singer. Pulling on his strength as a performing musician, his compositional soundworld is beautiful but also expertly crafted for ensembles and singers. The two pieces he composed for National Youth Choir in 2024 are exceptional and he is a wonderful collaborator. I would fully recommend any commissioning musical organisation to work with Jamie.”
— Ruth Evans, Executive Producer of National Youth Choir
“Jamie’s writing is agile, instinctive and grounded in a solid understanding of choral forces”
— Joanna Marsh, Composer
This is powerful and skilfully written text that’s set to Powe’s equally captivating and well-constructed music. Yes, there is deployment of the by-now universal cluster chords of post-Minimalism, but Powe is a creator who can write counterpoint too: the Kyrie, for example, opens with an angular fugal passage over a hum.
Many techniques make their appearance: busy syncopation in ‘Credo’; a blurring and transmuting of a repeated cadence in ‘Sanctus’; homophony deployed as quiet puissance in ‘Agnus Dei’. Powe also knows his choral pieces, and there are oblique references to them all over the work that echo the fusion going on in the text: Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast shimmers briefly in “By the waters of Columbine … there I sat down beneath my desk to weep”; a plainsong intonation of Credo is hinted at in its opening tenor solo.
— OMHmagazine review of Jamie’s The Gun Mass
Jamie is a London based composer with a particular affinity for choral writing, drawing on his extensive experience as a conductor and singer. He is particularly drawn to evocative and emotionally driven text, and loves working collaboratively with writers, ensembles and commissioners.
He studied composition at Oxford University with Toby Young and Deborah Pritchard, and continued his studies at The Royal Academy of Music with David Gorton and Gareth Moorcraft. He was one of the 2024/5 Young Composers with National Youth Choir, and is published with Stainer & Bell.
His piece, The Gun Mass, has been been performed across the UK and US, including Cadogan Hall in London, and Trinity Lutheran Church, Manhattan, New York.
Other recent commissions include choral settings of Sara Teasdale, Sappho, and Catullus, and Surge, an organ piece for Trinity College, Cambridge.
Below is a list of works. Please email me at jamiepowe101@ gmail. com for purchasing options, or to enquire about a commission.
Choral Works
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A setting of Sara Teasdale about finding hope in difficult times. Composed for National Youth Choir 18-25. Published by Stainer&Bell.
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A setting of Sappho fragments about yearning and desire. Composed for National Youth Choir Fellowship.
‘I need you. I ache for you. I burn for you’.
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A setting of Catullus 85.
‘Odi et amo. Quare id faciem fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.’
‘I hate and I love. Why do I do so, perhaps you ask? I do not know, but I feel it happening, and it is excruciating.’
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A setting of Catullus 101, for the funeral of his brother.
‘Hail, and Farewell.’
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Other Works
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Composed for Trinity College Cambridge, as part of the Choir & Organ New Music Series.
Scores available to download here for free until 30 November 2025
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Can be performed as a set or individually. (I , 3'; II, 3.5', III, 4.5').
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Settings of W.H.Auden’s The Third Temptation and Lullaby.
Please email for perusal score/purchasing options.
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Please email for perusal score/purchasing options.
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Please email for perusal score/purchasing options.
Arrangement
“The folk song, ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ [… was] sensitively arranged by the choir’s musical director, Jamie Powe.” - The Guardian
“Powe’s seductive arrangements of traditional Irish folk tunes are interspersed with English Renaissance polyphony and attractive pieces by contemporary Irish composers Áine Mallon and Rhona Clarke. It’s rare to sit amid such a spellbound audience, transfixed by the narration and the music – and, yes, there were tears.” - The Observer
Jamie arranges for choirs and contemporary a cappella groups. He has won the Outstanding Arrangement award at Voice Festival UK and has arranged for groups such as The Fourth Choir, The Oxford Belles, The Oxford Alternotives, Chanteuse, Somerville College Choir and Ukrainian pop megastar Olya Polyakova. Listen below.
