Composer Competition Winner 2025

Canadian Winner

Darren Xu

for Back to Me

Chinese Canadian composer Darren Xu is currently a PhD student at the Royal College of Music, where he recently obtained the Artist Diploma in Composition. Recently he became Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s NextGen Composer and is commissioned for a piece to be premiered by the TSO in November 2025. He enjoys writing music for acoustic instruments, films, and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

He has had the opportunity to work with various groups, including Standing Wave, the Wallace Collection, English National Ballet School, Roadrunner Trio, Barcelona Modern, Piano-Erhu Project, TorQ Percussion Quartet, VICO, and Trio Immersio. His first orchestral composition, To Liberate, was premiered by the WSO at the Winnipeg New Music Festival, and was subsequently read by the VSO. His film score, Stargazer, was awarded Best Score by New York Film Awards in November 2018. He received his BMus, BCom, and MMus at University of British Columbia.