Awards for Artists
Image of Laura Jurd
Photo: Emile Holba.

Laura Jurd

Laura Jurd (born 1990) is a composer and trumpet player working in the fields of improvised and contemporary music. With a background in both jazz and classical, Jurd brings musical elements from outside the world of jazz music into the realm of the jazz ensemble in a way that is uniquely her own. Jurd sites Igor Stravinsky, Steve Reich, Béla Bartók, Michael Tippett, Miles Davis and the Beatles as some of her deepest musical influences. A fascination with folk music is woven throughout her work.

Performing regularly throughout the UK and Europe, she leads the 2017 Mercury-nominated band Dinosaur, who have performed at North Sea, Montreal and Molde International Jazz Festivals to name a few.

As a composer-performer, Jurd strives to create distinctive environments for improvisation – frequently writing with individual players in mind. This extends to larger instrumentations as is evident in her recent tour of Stepping Back, Jumping In, commissioned by Kings Place and Sage Gateshead. A recipient of multiple awards and a BBC New Generation Artist from 2015-2017, Jurd has been commissioned by the BBC Proms and the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, Ligeti Quartet and the Northern Sinfonia.

A passionate educator, Jurd is also a composition teacher and lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance; jazz trumpet teacher at Goldsmiths University and works regularly with the National Youth Jazz Collective.

Receiving the Paul Hamlyn Award has come at a perfect moment in my journey as a composer-performer. It has gifted me the opportunity to realise future projects and collaborations to their upmost potential, as well as providing me with the space to explore, dream and create with a greater sense of freedom.
Laura Jurd

Examples of work


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Jumping In, 2019

Trumpet (Laura Jurd), string quartet (Ligeti Quartet), santoor (Soosan Lolavor), banjo (Rob Luft), trombone (Raphael Clarkson), euphonium (Martin Lee Thomson), piano (Elliot Galvin), electronics (Anja Lauvdal), double bass (Conor Chaplin), drums and percussion (Corrie Dick and Liz Exell).

10 minutes 46 seconds duration (extract 55s).

Premiered 1 March 2019 at Kings Place. Commissioned by Kings Place and Sage Gateshead.


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Jump, Cut, Shuffle, 2016

String quartet.

9 minutes 27 seconds duration (extract 1m 59s).

Written for the Ligeti Quartet. Commissioned by the Little Missenden Festival with support from the Britten-Pears Foundation. Premiered 16 October 2016.


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Human Spirit, 2014

Voice (Lauren Kinsella), trumpet (Laura Jurd and Chris Batchelor), trombone (Colm O’Hara), bass saxophone (Mick Foster), guitar (Alex Roth), drums (Corrie Dick).

6 minutes 48 seconds duration (extract 1m 11s).

Commissioned by the EFG London Jazz Festival 2014. From the 2015 album Human Spirit.


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Steadily Sinking, 2015

Trumpet (Laura Jurd), Fender Rhodes piano (Elliot Galvin), bass (Conor Chaplin), drums (Corrie Dick).

1 minute 53 seconds duration.

Written for Dinosaur. From the Mercury-nominated 2016 album, Together, As One, released on Edition Records.