jazz orchestra and beyond...
"outstanding … fresh, original contemporary music that certainly deserves to be given a much wider audience"
Jazzwise
Olivia Murphy has quickly established herself as an innovative, creative and colourful artist working in large ensemble composition and has developed her own distinct and personal voice. Her music fuses contemporary composition and song-writing with elements of free improvisation, while always keeping story-telling at its core, hailed as “some of the most exciting large ensemble jazz emerging from the London scene today” (UK Jazz News).
Since being awarded the prestigious Peter Whittingham Jazz Development Award in 2021, Murphy has established and performed with her Jazz Orchestra across the UK, from Birmingham Symphony Hall, to Vortex Jazz Club (London) to Cheltenham Jazz Festival. The Orchestra recorded their debut studio album with support from the Help Musicians’ Next Level Award in 2024. The album (expected release in early 2026) features Murphy’s 4-piece Sister Suite and her Eddie Harvey Award-winning arrangement of You Are There.
In March 2025, Murphy premiered Open World Suite, a fifty-minute, eight-movement jazz orchestra saga inspired by world-building in video games, performed by her jazz orchestra at a sold-out Pizza Express Jazz Club (London). Murphy swiftly followed this in May 2025 with Siren Cycle, a sixty-minute, ten-movement suite, inspired by folklore and Greek myth. The work followed an original long form poem also penned by Murphy, which featured four vocalists, strings, woodwinds, brass and rhythm section. Siren Cycle was commissioned by Tony Dudley-Evans for the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and was celebrated as “an undoubted triumph” (The Jazz Mann) and “A wildly ambitious odyssey… no more impressive event over the whole weekend” (UK Jazz News). Murphy hopes to record both of these ambitious large ensemble works with her Orchestra over the next year.
In 2024, Olivia became a Resident Musical Director for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, following a successful period as composer-in-residence in 2020-22. As resident MD, she leads weekly rehearsals, mentors young musicians and conducts national performances with the flagship Emerging Professional Band.
Olivia is regularly commissioned and in 2022 was honoured to be invited by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire to re-arrange the Mike Gibbs' piece The Time Has Come to celebrate the legendary and influential composer's 85th birthday. She has also been commissioned by the ABRSM (2024), Sonorite Saxophone Quartet (2023), University of Birmingham (2021), and Around The Houses Festival (2021).
Olivia loves to be collaborative and diverse in her compositional work, from her 2024 piece Europa, written for GOKUMI large ensemble and improvising vocal chorus, to her commissioned solo vibraphone work (for percussionist Gloria Yehilevsky), to lyrical song-writing for her award-winning Moonrise Trio (clarinet, voice and piano).

"Olivia is a real diamond, creating great work still so early in her career ... (her jazz orchestra) is a project that deserves to be seen on as many stages as possible"
Alex Carr, Cheltenham Jazz / Southbank Centre
large ensemble works & commissions
Siren Cycle (60 minutes) 4 female vocalists, violin, viola, cello, three woodwinds, trumpet, trombone, tuba, piano, guitar, double bass, drums. Cheltenham Jazz Festival, May 2025
Open World Suite (50 minutes) 17 piece jazz orchestra. London, March 2025
Europa (8 minutes) - improvising vocal chorus, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin 1 & 2, cello, lever harp, jazz guitar, double bass, percussion. London, May 2024.
Sister Suite (25 minutes) - 18-piece jazz orchestra. Four movement suite. Birmingham Symphony Hall (B:Jazz Festival), August 2023.
The Time Has Come (Mike Gibbs arr. Olivia Murphy) (7 minutes) - 15-piece jazz orchestra. Commissioned by Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, December 2022.
Somewhere, Not So Far Away (30 minutes) - 21-piece jazz orchestra, four piece live album. recorded live at Birmingham Symphony Hall, February 2022.
The Music of Amy Winehouse (arr. Olivia Murphy) - 22 piece jazz orchestra, arranged for a 20-date UK tour with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, 2021-2022.
There Is A Hill (5 minutes) - Jazz Orchestra Educational Programme, commissioned by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, June 2020.
Olivia has also been commissioned to write small ensemble / solo works by the ABRSM, Sonorite Saxophone Quartet, percussionist Gloria Yehilevsky, and Stoney Lane Records and provided arrangements for Guildhall School of Music And Dance, The NDR Big Band and the University Of Birmingham.

awards
The Musicians’ Company Eddie Harvey Jazz Arranger Award (2025) “You Are There”
Help Musicians Next Level Award (2024)
Help Musicians Peter Whittingham Development Award (2022)
National Youth Jazz Orchestra Composer In Residence (2020-2022)
Jazzlife Alliance Young Jazz Composer (2020)
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Mike Gibbs Jazz Composition Prize (2018 & 2019)
“her conducting style is almost like expressive dancing...very distinctive, clearly communicating nuance to the players. She’s almost entering the realms of shadow puppetry shapes!” Jazzwize