Recent performance highlights include the premiere of The Flight of Bitter Water (2022) broadcasted on Ö1, conducted by Marin Alsop and performed by ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, and the world premiere of Bray’s string quartet Ungrievable Lives (2022) performed by the Castalian String Quartet at Elbphilharmonie in collaboration with Caroline Burraway. Further performance highlights include: the world premiere at Oxford Lieder Festival of Crossing Faultlines (2021), a song cycle commissioned by soprano Samantha Crawford and pianist Lana Bode which sets specially commissioned poems by Nicki Jackowska about women’s experiences in the workplace; This other Eden (2020), commissioned by ECHO for their Rising Stars programme for oboist Cristina Gómez Godoy; The Certainty of Tides (December 2019) for solo cello and strings, performed by Natalie Clein and the Aurora Orchestra; triple concerto Germinate (May 2019) performed by the Sitkovetsky Trio and the Philharmonia, Investec International Music Festival; Bring Me All Your Dreams (June 2019) premiered by Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Aldeburgh Festival; Reflections In Time (May 2018) performed by the London Sinfonietta; and In Black Light (July 2018) premiered by violist Tabea Zimmerman at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

In 2019 Bray was awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Invisible Cities (2011). Winner of the Lili Boulanger Prize (2014), Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent (2014), and Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize (2010), At the Speed of Stillness (2011 – 12) featured in the ISCM World Music Days Festival 2017 in Vancouver. Bray was selected as a MacDowell Norton Stevens Fellow (2015 – 16) and interviewed as part of BBC Radio 3’s Composers’ Room series (2015). She is an Honorary Member of Birmingham Conservatoire, named as their Alumni of the Year 2014 (Excellence in Sport or the Arts), and listed in The Evening Standard’s Most Influential Londoners (2011). Composer-in-Residence with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/​Sound and Music (2009/10), Oxford Lieder Festival (2011) and Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival (2015), her residencies include MacDowell (2013, 2015), Liguria Study Centre Bogliasco (2013), and Aldeburgh Music (2010, 2015).

Portrait discs of Bray’s music have been recorded on RTF Classical (2018) and NMC Records (2014). Her work also features on several discs including Tecchlers Cello by Guy Johnston (Kings College Cambridge, 2017), Oberon Celebrates Shakespeare by the Oberon Trio (Avi-music and SWR, 2016) and Upheld by Stillness by the choral ensemble Ora (Harmonia Mundi, released February 2016).

Originally from High Wycombe, Bray (b.1982) graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire with First Class Honours, having studied composition with Joe Cutler, and then completed a Masters in Composition with Distinction from the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Mark-Anthony Turnage. She went on to participate in the Britten-Pears Contemporary Composition Course with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Magnus Lindberg and studied at Tanglewood Music Centre with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read-Thomas. She lives in Berlin.