Robert Laidlow
Robert Laidlow is a composer and researcher based in the UK. His “gigantically imaginative” (BBC Radio 3) music is concerned with developing new forms of creative expression through the relationship between music, advanced technology, and scientific research.
Robert’s music investigating the intersection of classical music, artificial intelligence, and creativity spans orchestral, chamber, and solo works. TECHNO-UTOPIA (2025), commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Silicon (2022), a symphonic-length work for the BBC Philharmonic, explore human music-making in the age of AI and have been featured in the New York Times, the New Scientist, Sky News, Bachtrack, BBC Radio, and international television. Post-Singularity Songs (2023) for soprano Stephanie Lamprea, uses AI to invent creation myths and love songs, situating this technology as oracle and worldbuilder. Tui (2024), for International Contemporary Ensemble, examines AI in relation to other non-human intelligence.
Robert’s creative process also frequently involves collaborations with scientists. His 2025 work Exoplanets, commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Basel Sinfonieorchester and Interfinity Festival, is a set of orchestral movements developed through collaboration with astrophysicists working with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. He is midway through a long-term project translating the four fundamental forces into music, having composed Gravity (2020) for the Echea Quartet and Chromodynamics (2021) for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Born in London, Robert read Music at Cambridge University before studying Composition with David Sawer at the Royal Academy of Music. From 2018-22 he was the RNCM PRiSM (Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music) PhD Researcher in Artificial Intelligence with the BBC Philharmonic. This resulted in a number of orchestral and ensemble works, including Warp for piano and orchestra and Three Entistatios for chamber ensemble. He is currently a Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University. Recent publications have focussed on notions of truth, authenticity, fakeness, bias, and structuralism in technology and music. He also lectures in Composition at the Faculty of Music, Oxford, is an Associate of RNCM PRiSM, and is a member of the Governing Body of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Photograph by Nicola Privato
