Composer Vivek Haria on principles of active listening

“I’ve come to realise that creating music — as a performer as much as a composer — is as much of a moral act, an ethical act, as an artistic one. Specifically, what do I take when I’m composing — what do I simplify, what do I leave untouched?”
Vivek Haria

Vivek Haria is a British composer and writer of Indian heritage, based in London. His repertoire blends traditional and contemporary elements, and at the core of his work is a deep connection to choral music. Vivek’s music is deeply influenced by his heritage and personal experiences; he has collaborated with musicians and ensembles including the BBC Singers, Mahan Esfahani and Fenella Humphreys, and players of the London Symphony Orchestra as part of the LSO Soundhub Associate scheme. Vivek read Music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Raymond Yiu and Richard Causton, and he continues to be mentored by Brian Elias. Beyond composition, Vivek is a chartered accountant, as well as a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s inaugural NewGen board.

Vivek was recently selected as one of the 2026 composers on the Royal Philharmonic Society Composers programme, with whom he is writing a new work for Margaret Lingas and Christopher Glynn, to be premiered at Swaledale Festival in June 2026. Following his appointment to the RPS Composers programme, we caught up with Vivek in a café in south-west London, discussing choral traditions, breathing together, Jain spiritual traditions, recalibrating as a composer, active listening, and more…

Vivek Haria, ‘ॐ: The Imperishable’ (2024), performed by The Marian Consort as part of Choir and Organ Magazine’s New Music Series.
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: Hi Vivek! Thanks so much for joining me today. You’re currently in the midst of writing a new work for Swaledale Festival as part of the Royal Philharmonic Society 2026 Composers programme. Can you tell me a bit about your experience so far with Swaledale Festival, and how the environment has impacted your writing?

Vivek Haria: It’s a pleasure to be here! This is the first site-specific piece I’ve written, and it’s been a genuinely transformative experience. The work is deeply rooted in Swaledale itself, and it’s been incredibly special to step outside the familiar, urban bubble in which my music-making usually takes place. I spent time tracing the course of the River Swale, following it both physically and imaginatively, as a way of understanding the place from the inside out.

The piece takes the form of a song cycle for soprano and piano, and I’m delighted to be collaborating with Margaret Lingas and Christopher Glynn. From my very first conversation with Fraser Wilson [ed. artistic director of Swaledale Festival], there was a clear emphasis on trust and openness — on ensuring that the composer, performers, and the festival were all equally supported. That sense of alignment at the outset of a collaboration feels increasingly rare, and it immediately set the tone for the project.

That’s so wonderful — and fantastic to hear that the director of Swaledale has been so involved, as well. What initial materials have you been exploring so far, and how do they relate to the River Swale?

I’ve been thinking a lot about rivers as sound in motion — about flow, interruption, and accumulation over time. Fraser and I went on a mini-adventure together, tracing parts of the Swale, and I made notes not just about what I was hearing, but about how each place felt — the different characters and energies along the river’s course.

We began right at the source, where two small streams meet. What struck me was the immediacy of contrast: an extraordinary sense of energy existing right alongside sudden tranquillity. There’s no gradual transition — those states coexist, side by side — and that idea has become very important musically.

I’m also drawn to very simple, intimate sounds. One image that’s stayed with me is water being poured from a jug into a glass — there’s something innocent, fragile, but unmistakably alive about it. I felt that same quality when we reached the stepping stones in Reeth. At the other end of the river, in Richmond, there’s a waterfall that feels like a kind of arrival or release. Those physical experiences are feeding very directly into how the piece is taking shape.

Can you tell me where your text is coming from — and how you’re planning to treat the text, musically?

The central text is a poem from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore’s writing is already so musical and resonant that it demands a certain restraint. The idea of “setting” text — particularly sacred or philosophical writing — makes me cautious. These words already carry many years of listening within them. Rather than manipulating the text, I’m more interested in creating space around it: allowing silence to do some of the work and enabling the performers to exist with the text rather than simply project it. It’s about presentation rather than decoration.

To deepen the work’s relationship with Yorkshire, I’ve also chosen two poems from Ted Hughes’s River collection. There’s a humility in Hughes’s writing that I find deeply moving — a fierce attentiveness to the river itself without grandiosity. His commitment to the natural world, and particularly to rivers and wildlife, comes through so vividly. Again, the music isn’t there to dominate, but to help articulate the power that’s already present in the language.

I’m currently reading Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive?, which has also been reshaping how I think about musical form and flow more generally.

Vivek Haria by the River Swale, as part of Swaledale Festival.

Tell me a bit about your musical background — how did you develop your compositional language? Was composing something you always felt drawn to?

I came to composition through listening rather than through making. Music was always present growing up, but I understood myself first and foremost as a listener. At home, the sound world was extraordinarily varied — everything from Hindustani classical music and Jain devotional chant to popular music from East Africa and beyond. Listening for me was never passive; it was something physical and absorbing.

Western classical music entered more formally through my education. I was fortunate to attend schools where choral singing was a central part of daily life, and for a long time I assumed I would become a singer. Composition didn’t really cross my mind as an option then. A real turning point came while I was studying at the Junior Royal College of Music, when I performed in the premiere of Gabriel Jackson’s Passion. It was the first time I’d worked on a new piece with the composer present — someone shaping the music in real time. That experience was revelatory. It sparked my curiosity about how music is made, and it was the moment when composition began to feel possible.

You mentioned that choral music was a big part of your upbringing. Much of your compositional output is choral, as well — what does the voice, and the idea of singing together, mean for you?

The voice feels like the most natural medium for me. It’s the most physical sound we have: it breathes, it carries text, belief, and intention. Even when I’m writing instrumental music, I’m thinking vocally — about phrasing, resonance, and breath.

I tend to approach instrumental ensembles in much the same way as choral writing. I’m interested in collectivity — in people breathing and listening together. Choral music isn’t a niche for me; it’s a laboratory where language, time, vulnerability, and shared responsibility come into sharp focus. There’s a particular honesty in ensemble singing. Beyond technique, there’s exposure — you’re offering something personal, perhaps even sacred to others.

Are there observations about the voice that you feel have specifically come from your experience as a singer?

Absolutely. One of the most fundamental aspects of ensemble singing is the unspoken agreement to breathe together. I’ve worked with many conductors over the years, and I’ve noticed they often say, “You didn’t breathe together.” It sounds simple, but it’s everything. Everyone has to commit to creating the same sound, with the same intention, at the same moment.

Interestingly, I recently sang my first solo gig in a long time — some arias from Handel’s Messiah — and it felt surprisingly comfortable. Yet when I sing in a choir or small consort, I often feel more exposed. There’s a heightened sense of responsibility: your breath, timing, and sound directly affect the people around you.

I’m drawing parallels with something you said earlier, about listening being an active act — having to listen to the singers around you. Is that where your initial interests in composition spurred from?

Yes. Composition emerged as a way of understanding what I was experiencing from the inside. I was curious about why certain harmonic shifts felt inevitable, or why particular texts gained weight when sung collectively rather than individually. Writing music felt like a more focused form of listening — an act of paying closer attention to how material behaves over time, and how meaning accumulates. Listening is often underestimated; it’s an active, demanding skill.

Vivek Haria, ‘Lord, I Cry Unto Thee’ (2021), performed by The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge.
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You studied music at Cambridge University — how did having that academic grounding shape you as a composer during that time?

I didn’t initially think of myself as a composer at all. What fascinated me was why certain sounds felt necessary — what internal logic made a gesture feel inevitable. Cambridge provided a rigorous framework for exploring those questions. You’re immersed in the canon, but you’re also encouraged to interrogate it: to understand how it’s constructed, where its assumptions lie, and how it functions.

Alongside English choral music, I was drawn to Messiaen, Puccini, the Second Viennese School, the Italian Radicals, Saariaho, and many others. But it was probably Stravinsky’s late period that left the deepest mark. Works such as Requiem Canticles and Movements for Piano and Orchestra made me question how the same composer could also have written The Rite of Spring. That sense of continual reinvention — of remaining in flux across a lifetime — made a great impression on me.

There’s a strong movement now to critique, decolonise, and challenge the canon. But I believe it’s vital to understand and appreciate how the canon is constructed before you dismantle it. You need to grasp its strengths as well as its limitations in order to find your own position. That process of engagement — rather than reverence or rejection — became central to how I developed.

You need to know the rules to break them, I guess. And it’s the same if you decide to choose your own set of rules…

Exactly. You need to understand the rules in order to break them — or, just as importantly, to decide which rules you want to replace them with. I was really struck by a recent article by Ivan Hewett, where he reflects on learning strict stylistic disciplines like Palestrina counterpoint and Bach fugue during his undergraduate studies. I had a similar experience for several years at university: working inside very tightly defined musical systems, sometimes to the point of frustration. But, as a result of this, you learn how harmony functions, how aesthetic choices emerge from constraint, and how musical processes generate meaning.

I don’t think I feel antagonistic towards the canon, but neither do I feel obliged to inherit it uncritically. For me, the value lies in understanding the grain of the material so that when you push against it, the resistance is meaningful.

Creatively, was there anything in particular that Cambridge — or some of your composition teachers and mentors there — imparted on you? For me, there’s something in what you’ve said about this idea of finding freedom, or choices, within the constraints of learning the canon…

Very much so. Freedom within constraint is something I think is often undervalued, and that idea really intrigued me during my time at Cambridge. I was fortunate to study with Richard Causton, who was instrumental in shaping how I think about limitation as a creative tool. I remember him speaking about his orchestral piece Ik zeg: NU, and how placing very specific constraints on material — for example, limiting harmonic behaviour in certain instrumental groups — didn’t reduce expressive possibility at all. If anything, it intensified it. Hearing how such tightly defined parameters could produce something so vivid and compelling made a lasting impression. He was also the first person to give me real confidence in my work.

From there, working with Raymond Yiu was formative but in a different way. He was rigorous, direct, and deeply invested in craft. Ray pushed me to listen more carefully, to think critically about and to engage analytically with orchestration and form.

What I value most is that these relationships extended beyond academic requirements. Mentors like Richard, Ray, Daniel Kidane, and now Brian Elias have all offered something much rarer: sustained, thoughtful support — people I can speak to honestly, who challenge me when needed, and who are invested in the longer journey rather than short-term outcomes. That sense of trust and openness has shaped not just how I compose, but how I think about collaboration more broadly.

You’ve mentioned Brian Elias — how has he mentored you recently?

Mentorship, for me, is about guidance rather than prescription. Brian has helped me learn how to listen to what a piece actually needs, rather than what my ego wants it to be. That patience — allowing things to unfold gradually — brings clarity. We’ve spoken a great deal about text-setting. His Five Songs to Poems by Irina Ratushinskaya remains a touchstone for me. The way he thinks about text and orchestration, particularly when working with large forces, is extraordinary and goes far beyond my understanding at this stage of my life.

In recent years, Brian has been one of the most important presences in my life, both personally and creatively. I feel incredibly fortunate to have a mentor like that, who doesn’t impose answers but instead helps me to ask better questions.

Vivek Haria, ‘Ennui’ (2022), performed by players of the London Symphony Orchestra as part of the LSO Soundhub Associate scheme.
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Something we’ve discussed previously is the fact that you’ve taken a break from composing, and you also work full-time as a chartered accountant…

I’ve actually found it really illuminating to look at the experiences of people who step away from music for a period. There’s something important about removing yourself from the process entirely — not as avoidance, but as a form of distance and a way of thinking more clearly about who you are and what you want to make. I’ve spoken about this a lot with Brian, in particular: taking time away can be a form of recalibration, and I feel in some ways it’s just as essential as the act of composing itself.

I became very aware of how much pressure there is in the new music world to be constantly “visible”, and how much I had succumbed to FOMO. That eventually became unsustainable. Working full-time outside music has forced me to be deliberate about how and why I compose. I wanted to attend concerts to support artists whose work I genuinely cared about — not just for the sake of visibility or momentum. Rather than diluting my identity, that distance concentrated it. I now feel much more certain about the kind of composer I want to be and about returning to music on my own terms — with purpose, patience, and a renewed sense of agency.

Where does that sit for you? Do you feel like working full-time in finance has a kind of impact on how you’re perceived as a composer?

I’m not especially concerned with how I’m perceived as a composer. I really resonated with Rob Crehan’s article in that respect — particularly the distinction he makes between what you do and who you are. People often ask, “What do you do for a living?”, and then, in a different register, “Who are you?”. Those are fundamentally different questions, and I don’t think they should be collapsed into one another.

I’ve always believed in the value of being a well-rounded person. The broader your life is — intellectually, emotionally, practically — the richer your work becomes. That doesn’t mean everything feeds directly into the music in a literal way, but it shapes how you listen, how you think, and how you make choices.

So, when someone asks, “What’s your main thing?”, I find that framing a bit limiting. It shuts down a range of possible answers before the conversation has really begun. For me, the more interesting space lies in allowing those different strands to coexist, and in letting the work speak for itself rather than trying to pre-empt how it should be categorised.

Tell me a bit more about what you mean by being well-rounded. Is that something you learned from taking a break from music, or something that’s always been present for you?

The break certainly prompted a shift in how I articulated it, but the idea itself has been present for a long time. From quite early on, through my upbringing and education, there was a strong sense that education isn’t just about acquiring skills, but about shaping the whole person. The greater your cultural and intellectual awareness — the more exposure you have to different ways of thinking, different people, different contexts — the more rounded you become.

Choosing to work in finance was a very conscious decision. Pursuing a career as a musician now — particularly in the current climate — is incredibly demanding, and I realised over time that I wanted my relationship with music to be shaped differently. Having a full-time role has given me stability, but more importantly, it has given me perspective and freedom.

Being outside the new-music bubble — and it is a bubble — has also kept me honest. Most people aren’t invested in our internal debates, however urgent they can feel from the inside. I’ll talk about the music I’m making with colleagues at work, and they’re genuinely curious, open, and engaged in a way that cuts through a lot of that insularity. That perspective feeds back into both my thinking and my practice, and it’s been unexpectedly nourishing.

I get that. Everything kind of feeds into each other — and your music can be a reflection of all of your lived experiences, not just what’s being discussed in the new music bubble.

Yes — for me, it’s qualia, the lived experience, that ultimately gives a piece of art its force. If I can’t sense the experiential or emotional reality underpinning a work, I tend to feel distanced from what the creator is trying to communicate. That sense of connection matters a great deal to me.

I’m not suggesting that every piece of music needs to elicit an overt emotional response — of course not. But I do think there needs to be intention, and a felt relationship to that intention, rather than the music existing purely as surface or gesture. That grounding in lived experience is often what allows a work to resonate, even when its language is abstract.

Where does that word — qualia — come from, and what does it mean for you artistically? I’ve not come across it before…

The word derives from the Latin, but I first came across it a few years ago on a panel about AI and art when one of the other panellists introduced the term. In simple terms, it refers to lived, conscious experience — the felt, emotional, bodily aspect of being human.

That idea really stuck with me. As impressive as AI tools are, I think it’s dangerous to assume they can replace our most internal and intimate modes of perception. For me, qualia names the thing that feels irreducibly human: the fact that art comes from someone having experienced something, and trying (imperfectly) to communicate that experience. When I encounter a piece of music, I want to sense intention behind it, rather than something assembled purely from surface behaviours.

What’s interesting is that this doesn’t depend on biography in a literal way. Take Brian Elias, for example. I don’t know whether he ever sang in a choir, but his vocal music is among the most instinctively vocal I’ve encountered. Pieces like Meet me in the Green Glen show an extraordinary understanding of text, melody, and harmonic implication. That, to me, is qualia in action — not autobiography, but a deep internalisation of what it means to write for voices and for people. It’s something I hugely admire, and something I aspire to in my own work.

Vivek Haria, ‘Dhyāna’ (2022), performed by Kristian Nyquist and Ola Sendecki at Orgelpark, Amsterdam, Netherlands, as part of the Prix Annelie de Man Composers Competition 2023.
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You’ve mentioned that Jain music has had a significant influence on your practice. Does this influence relate back to your faith, your upbringing, or something you discovered later?

It really goes back to my musical upbringing. I grew up surrounded by Jain chant — stavans, stotras, and mantras — so those sounds were part of my listening world long before I thought consciously about composition. We have the Navkar Mantra — which I still recite daily — and it can be spoken or sung. Those practices shaped how I think about time, and perhaps more importantly, how I listen.

A raga isn’t simply a scale; it’s associated with a particular cycle, season, or time of day. But for me it goes beyond mood. It’s a way of behaving in sound — an attitude towards duration, patience, and attention. It asks you to process time differently, not as something to move through quickly, but something to inhabit.

That sense of patience — of arriving somewhere slowly — comes partly from my upbringing as a Jain, and partly from later influences, including Brian, who was born and raised in India himself. In Jain devotional practice, repetition isn’t about development or progression; it’s an act of humility. Repetition as devotion rather than narrative. That runs very counter to many Western assumptions about musical form.

When I was growing up, when someone passed away, we would gather at a relative’s house and chant the Navkar Mantra many times over. As a child, I remember getting restless after a few repetitions. But having lived with that practice over many years, you begin to understand what it teaches: patience, stillness, and attentiveness. You’re forced to slow down. And I think that relationship to time — and to listening — has quietly but profoundly shaped how I think about music.

Can you tell me some of the ways in which Jainism has informed your compositional outlook?

I’ve got so many things to say about my dharma — by which I mean my ethical path, or way of living and acting in the world. It informs my music in many different ways. I’m not particularly interested in fusion; that’s been (and still is) explored extensively. What interests me much more is translation: what survives when an idea is moved between cultures, between modes of thinking or ways of working? What resists being transported? I’m less interested in borrowing materials, more so in borrowing ways of listening.

Jainism isn’t only a religion; it’s a philosophy and a way of life. Jain music and thought have taught me that sound itself carries ethical weight. In that sense, it’s shaped my ethics more than my aesthetics. At the centre of Jain philosophy is ahimsa — nonviolence — and that makes you think very carefully about intention. Not just in life, but in art: about excess, ego, self-indulgence, and the consequences of action.

Over time, I’ve come to realise that creating music — as a performer as much as a composer — is as much of a moral act, an ethical act, as an artistic one. Specifically, what do I take when I’m composing — what do I simplify, what do I leave untouched? I remember listening to Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet when I was at university — a piece I still find incredibly moving. But a tutor once asked me to think about it differently: what gives Bryars the right to sample the voice of a homeless man? And more broadly, what gives us, as artists, the right to use material that may be ethically complex? That question has stayed with me. Jainism has made me much more alert to those tensions — and to the responsibility that comes with making art.

I totally understand this. I’ve recently made a few shifts in my own creative outlook for much the same reasons — there’s a kind of moral or philosophical responsibility to the music you write.

Silence, restraint, and slowness aren’t stylistic choices for me; they’re philosophical ones. Restraint — the act of holding back; slowness and patience; and finally, silence. I often think about the Japanese concept of mā: the space between things. Silence is so often undervalued, treated as an absence rather than a presence, when in fact it carries its own weight and meaning.

In much of my recent work, I’ve tried to rethink how I relate to silence. It’s not just about how long performers play for, but how silence is placed, and how it’s allowed to function emotionally. There’s a conversation between Yuval Noah Harari and Hikaru Utada where they talk about the silence before performers come on stage, and the silence after the final note has sounded, as two entirely different sound worlds. I find that idea incredibly powerful and that distinction has changed how I listen.

Silence isn’t neutral — it’s transformed by what precedes it. What you leave out in music can be just as significant, if not more so, than what you put in. For me, composing becomes an act of carving out space; not only for sound to exist, but for attention, reflection, and meaning to emerge.

Vivek Haria, on stage with composers James Batty, Zhenyan Li, and Mathis Saunier at the London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub showcase.

Tell me a bit more about this idea of patience, and slowing down — do you feel your music gives yourself, or audiences, that space? Do you consciously try to embody that in the compositional process?

Slowing down gives me the space to think more critically. It’s a chance to step back and question my own choices — not to be harsh or judgmental, but to reflect: Why am I writing it this way? Why does this interaction between these instruments or voices need to be expressed in this particular style? It makes me more aware, not just of limitations, but of other sonic and artistic possibilities — the range of choices I might explore.

We were talking earlier about taking a break from composition… I think that some of my best ideas come when I’m completely removed from music. Pausing and stepping away from the desk allows me to appreciate what I’ve done and recalibrate my approach. Deadlines are useful, of course — they give you a clear target — but the real magic often happens in the space leading up to that deadline, when you give yourself room to reflect, experiment, and rediscover what’s possible.

Do you feel like that naturally translates to audience experience as well — is that something you think about?

A lot of my music I would describe as meditative and reflective — quite introspective. Take, for example, ॐ: The Imperishable, which is centred on aum — the spirituality and the being. My intention with that piece was to help the audience feel more grounded, more attuned to their surroundings. That sense of grounding is important not just for listeners, but for me as a composer as well. If someone comes away feeling that time behaved slightly differently for a few minutes, that feels like success to me. Inviting audiences to slow down goes hand in hand with inviting them to reflect.

I see my role as a composer as creating spaces for listening and reflection — for audiences to engage with themselves and with others in the space. Going back to what I said earlier about listening as an active choice, I think my music exists at that intersection: of listening, of voice, and of the most intricate, sacred, intimate parts of ourselves. It acts as a messenger of the soul. The work is informed by ritual and the fundamentals of my Jain philosophy. It’s not innovation for its own sake; it’s about creating space — space for attention, space for reflection, space to inhabit the present moment.

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Vivek Haria’s new song cycle for Swaledale Festival 2026, commissioned as part of the Royal Philharmonic Society Composers programme, takes place on 4 June – more information can be found here: