William Gardner is an award-winning composer and performer from London. William is a scholar currently completing his MA in Opera-Making at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, under the tutelage of Dr Toby Young, and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2023 with a first-class degree in Composition, studying with Phil Cashian.

Based in London, he is known primarily as a composer of opera. His first opera, ‘A New England’, premiered at the Royal Academy of Music’s inaugural Students Create Festival in 2022, and was selected to be part of Tête-à-Tête: The Opera Festival 2022. His second opera, ‘The Prisoner’, which won the Steven Oliver Award, also premiered at the Students Create Festival 2023, and is being revived at the Britten Theatre, RCM, as part of Tête-à-Tête 2024. His third opera, ‘Time and Tide’, premiered in 2024 in the Milton Court Studio Theatre.

Other recent works include an Organ Concerto, which was shortlisted for the Kaija Saariaho Organ Composition Competition, a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis, and an adaptation of the fifth chapter of Matthew Green’s Times Top 10 bestselling book ‘Shadowlands’, which received its first public performance in March 2022 at the launch of ‘Shadowlands’.