CN Lester is a composer and improviser, whose recent commissions include choral works for young voices for the 2023 Friday Afternoon Series for Britten Pears Arts/National Youth Choir, a 10th anniversary work for the Fourth Choir, and incidental music for Jamie Hale’s theatrical production NOT DYING.

CN is currently working on a collection of vocal/piano works based on historical poems of openly expressed queer yearning, eroticism, and love, inspired by the particular vocal qualities of a range of collaborators. Songs of Desire currently features poetry by Proust, Lowell, Rimbaud, and Verlaine – premieres so far include performances by Harriet Burns and Nigel Foster for The London Song Festival (above) and Hestor Dart and Panaretos Kyriatzidis (below). Songs of Desire will be available in full by mid 2025.

CN studied composition with Jonathan Cole and Silvina Milstein; their first opera, The Lion-Faced Man (mezzo-soprano, piano trio, static image, libretto by Robin Gurney) was premiered to a sold-out run at the 2015 Tête à Tête Festival. After taking a break from public sharings of their classical compositions during their PhD, they are now returning to public commissions and performances, incorporating their improvisational and devising practices alongside their more traditional compositional training.