Nina Whiteman is a composer, vocalist, and multimedia artist. Recent work engages with the natural world, probing tensions with technologies through playful performances that often involve audience interaction. Bagworm (a folk horror opera) (2025), written and performed by Nina, has toured independent DIY venues and been warmly received by audiences new to opera: ‘Opera in adaptation and multimedia – brilliant infusion of sound manipulation, live performance and collage film. Amazing.’; ‘It was wonderful and entrancing.’ In this work, the life cycle of a bagworm moth forms the basis for a folk horror narrative critiquing human engagement with nature.
Her project BELOW GROUND is a collaborative interdisciplinary investigation of the subterranean (funded by Arts Council England in 2023), and has included devised group multisensory multimedia performances alongside chamber-scale multimedia works Moss (2023) and Earthed (for Adam Swayne, 2024), as well as ‘Sonic Gardening’ workshops in the community.
In 2022-23, Nina created a cycle of multimedia works titled The Cybird Trilogy, investigating potential of AI in both sonic and visual domains to express complex relationships between nature and technology. An audience member at the premiere of ‘Fuming’, commented: ‘Nina Whiteman produced a bloody blinding piece of music and art that laid bare the tragedy of automation and inner city living and its effects on nature, that was hilarious, whimsical, and often insane and disturbing. The only sentient being in the room. BRILLIANT.’
Described as ‘beguiling’ (The Guardian), Nina’s 2016 composition for the BBC Philharmonic was performed at the Bridgewater Hall and commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 3. Work during 2017-2022 has drawn inspiration from mazes and labyrinths, placing performers and audience in disorienting spaces and employing maze-like semi-graphic notation (House of Mazes, TOMB, Everything near becomes distant).
Her music has been performed widely in the UK and abroad by ensembles such as Manchester Camerata, Quatuor Danel, Dutch accordion duo TOEAC, Riot Ensemble, Ealing Youth Orchestra, Psappha, Colinton Amateur Orchestra (Adopt-a-composer scheme), and Distractfold Ensemble at venues and festivals including the Cheltenham Music Festival, Kettle’s Yard, the Bridgewater Hall, Kings Place and the RNCM. International performances include The Galaxy Rotation Problem at the World Music Days festival (Slovenia, 2015; selected by British and international panels).
Nina has a record of innovative collaborations with practitioners from other art forms, including performances in Amsterdam, and at the Manchester International Festival with performance artist Michael Mayhew, singing glossolalia in artist Ron Athey’s Gifts of the Spirit, creating sound for a motion-graphics installation by James Snazell (shown in Rome, Athens, Nottingham, and Camarthen), sound for performance artist Karen McLeod, and a solo performance art piece for a group show 11 11 11 – in remembrance – Manchester (funded by Arts Council England).
Nina sings in and co-directs Trio Atem (flute, mezzo, cello), who specialise in performances of new and recent repertoire with an emphasis on commissioning new work and cross-genre projects. Engagements have included the Bridgewater Hall (BBC Philharmonic Ink Still Wet series), Kings Place, York Late Music Festival, Leeds University Contemporary Music Festival, RMA student conference, and The University of Manchester lunchtime concert series. She is also known as an innovative vocal improviser, performing regularly at series including Curious Ear and Klang, both as a soloist and with groups such as her band David (with David Birchall and David ‘Preost’ McGregor).
Nina is Artistic Director of Manchester Contemporary Youth Opera, an organisation she co-founded to trail blaze and facilitate creation of new opera by young and emerging artists.
Work in education has included leading several projects for Manchester Camerata’s Learning and Participation programme, teaching on the National Youth Orchestra’s summer course, and lecturing at The University of Manchester, RNCM, and Lancaster University. She is Reader in Composition and Director of Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London, and professor of Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music.
