About
Damien Collis is a composer working across concert music and interdisciplinary arts, bringing together acoustic composition, collaborative processes and technology-led approaches to sound.
His composition work has been performed in the UK and internationally, often drawing on people, memory, history and lived experience. Collaboration is central to his wider practice, with projects shaped by the experiences, perspectives and ways of making brought by the people involved.
These encounters create a form of shared storytelling, allowing meaning to develop through the creative process and the different experiences brought into the work. Across composition, collaborative projects, community workshops and teaching, Damien is interested in how people make, understand and experience the arts, and in the ways creative work can be encountered, shared and used.
Bio
Works
Recent work includes a collaborative set of six duets with guitarist Richard Peace, bringing together Damien’s classical perspective with Peace’s ear-led background in folk, pop and rock. Developed through shared writing and performance, the pieces move between classical and folk traditions and were performed by the duo at the NEUE WÄNDE Festival in Münster, Germany, in May 2026.
Fanfare ’25, written for mixed ensemble, was performed at York Minster in November 2025.
His oboe and piano work Days Gone By grew from an exploration of childhood memory, nostalgia and lamentation. It was performed in recital in Osaka, Japan, in July 2025 by oboist Hanako Sogi.
Creative leadership & project-making
In 2026, Damien was composer and project lead for And, What Do You Do?, a three-strand interdisciplinary project spanning dance, acting and text, and music technology. Each strand developed through direct collaboration with another artistic practice, with collaborators’ processes, responses and decisions shaping the musical material.
In November 2025, Damien was co-curator and composer for This Garden of Death at York Cemetery, a programme of new music created in response to the cemetery’s space and history. Bringing together different composers’ perspectives, the project explored how place can evoke memory, interpretation and personal connection, with each response shaping a different musical story.
In March 2025, Damien co-created and served as Creative Director and composer for the Sustainable Fashion Show, an interdisciplinary performance exploring sustainability through music, clothing and personal experience. Participants brought their own relationships to what they wore — from reuse and inherited clothing to handmade pieces and individual identity — allowing those stories to become part of the performance. The composition followed the same principle, reusing, reframing and reshaping musical ideas to explore how far material could develop before something new was needed.
From 2018–2020, Damien was Operations Director and resident Musical Director at Inkwell Productions, working across company operations, production planning, rehearsals and live performance alongside composition and musical direction for theatre. The role combined organisational and creative leadership across productions staged throughout England, including Cambridge, Birmingham, Norwich, Suffolk and London.
Performance
Damien maintains an active performance practice as a pianist and multi-instrumentalist across concert, theatre, ensemble and event settings. Alongside piano, he has performed on guitar, bass and woodwind, with experience in accompaniment, theatre pits, function and popular music, classical performance and collaborative projects.
His freelance instrumental work has included weddings, business events, drinks receptions, care homes and community settings, alongside work as an accompanist and ensemble musician.
Teaching & community practice
Damien’s teaching and community practice spans private piano, music theory and composition tuition, undergraduate theory teaching, workshops and participatory music-making.
His academic research explores how composition and musical decision-making can come before formal theory and notation, encouraging learners to create sound, experiment and develop confidence in their own musical choices. The research aims to build a more responsive framework for teaching music, placing the individual learner, creative ownership and different ways of understanding music at its centre.
More recently, Damien delivered three composition workshops for primary school children with the Richard Shephard Foundation, creating new pieces from the children’s directions and responses to text and live musical material.
He later extended this approach in an adult workshop at York Theatre Royal, where non-musicians guided the creation of music around Greek mythology through their own ideas, interpretations and responses.
Education
MA Music — York St John University
BA (Hons) Music, First Class — York St John University