An unclassifiable polymath, British-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Nwando fabulates speculative fictions and alternate realities at the intersection of live art, experimental music and multi-sensory installation.

Described by The Wire as ‘“a brilliantly original performer and composer whose music inhabits liminal and mythic spaces”, her compositional work includes major commissions from the BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Aurora Orchestra, Opera North, Mahogany Opera, Sky Arts and Britten–Pears Arts. These projects reveal a bold, theatrical sensibility—one that resists the neat edges of genre and embraces the disorienting and ecstatic.

Her ongoing large-scale project Hildegard: Visions reimagines medieval mysticism through a multisensory lens, fusing scent design, choral fragments, electronics, and ritual movement into a contemporary mystery play for the body and the brain.

As both composer and performer, Ebizie has garnered major industry prestige: nominated for a 2021 Ivor Novello Award, winner of the Oram Award, The Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance, a PRS Composers Award and recipient of the Steve Reid Innovation Award and, most recently, the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists (2025). This award-winning work has toured globally including Tokyo (Bonobo), Rio de Janeiro (Tempo Festival), Berlin (Chalet), Latvia (Baltais Fligelis Concert Hall) and Zurich (Blok) as well as across the UK from The Hepworth to the Barbican and Southbank Centre.

Her visceral musical language, steeped in both the cerebral and the vernacular, has been shaped through long-term cross-genre collaborations with artists, neuroscientists, ritual practitioners and technologists including residencies at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Paco do Frevo Museum, Recife (British Council Musician in Residence) and Yarmonics.

Often commissioned by leading avant-garde musicians, she has composed works for Zubin Kanga, Juliet Fraser, Juice Vocal Ensemble, Laura Bowler, the Hermes Experiment and featured on a number of releases.

Her own debut album was released in 2022 on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records to critical acclaim including features in The Wire, The Quietus, Resident Advisor, radio play on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and selected in many top albums of the year including on Bandcamp.

Crossing boundaries of curator and artist, her solo exhibitions have toured HOME Mcr, Lighthouse, Brighton Festival, Liberty Festival, Melbourne Science Gallery and MENTAL at Art/Science Singapore. Curated happenings include: Wellcome Collection Lates: Your Reality is Broken, Crystal Opening: Site Gallery, In the Black Fantastic Weekender for Southbank Centre.

Nwando Ebizie website: click here!

fast forward classical represents Nwando Ebizie Europe-wide (less United Kingdom).