A ‘composer on the rise’ (Morning Star), Edinburgh-based Neil Tòmas Smith writes chamber, orchestral and choral works. He is fascinated by the connections between sound, space and movement.
Neil studied in York and Stuttgart, the latter leading to a keen interest in German contemporary music. In Germany, he won first prize in the Acht Brücken Composition Competition with ‘Gravitation’, and his orchestral work, ‘Habitus’, was performed by the WDR Symphony Orchestra.
Neil’s debut album, Stop Motion Music, was released in 2023 and received a 5* review from the Scotsman, Ken Walton writing that the ‘whole album is powerful and moving’. This CD was a self-realised project, funded by the Hope Scott Trust, Creative Scotland, and the PRS Foundation.
In 2025, Neil’s titanic work Hidden Polyphony for symphony orchestra, baroque orchestra, soprano and vocal consort was premiered by the RSNO, Dunedin Consort and Anna Dennis, conducted by Thomas Søndergård. The piece attracted widespread acclaim, Ken Walton writing that it was ‘both dramatic and enchanting’; the Edinburgh Guide describing it as ‘inspirational’; and the Edinburgh Music Review stating that it was a ‘contemporary work of substance and quality’.
Recent work has focused on the intersection between science and music. ‘Perihelion and Aphelion’ for orchestra (a diptych that can be performed either way round) engages with orbits in both illustrative and concrete ways: there is an exploration of circular movement in the latter while orbital data informs the trajectories of the instruments in both.
‘Aphelion’ was selected as part of the Scottish submission to the International Society of Contemporary Music World Music Days in Shanghai and was subsequently chosen for performance by the international jury.
