William Gardner is an award-winning composer from London whose work is rooted in storytelling, theatricality, emotionality, and the uncanny. Central to his practice is the combination of artistic innovation with audience accessibility, and the belief that music should provoke a genuine emotional response.

His three operas have been performed at venues including the Susie Sainsbury Theatre, the Britten Theatre, Milton Court Studio Theatre, and the Cockpit Theatre. His second opera, The Prisoner, won the Stephen Oliver Award in 2023.

His media work spans theatre, television, and video games: he has composed for East Riding Theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol, a pilot documentary Hidden Britain produced in conjunction with Channel 4, and is currently in the early stages of development on a major new AAA video game.

Alongside composition, he is interested in aesthetics and the evolving philosophical landscape. His 2024 paper, Emotion, Nostalgia and Sentimentality: The Emergence of a Metamodern New Romanticism, currently under consideration for publication, argues that a New Romantic sensibility has emerged in contemporary music, where sincerity, nostalgia, and everyday emotionality are reimagined through metamodern aesthetics.

He completed his undergraduate studies in composition with a First from the Royal Academy of Music in 2023, before going straight on to join the Opera Makers MA course at Guildhall School of Music & Drama with a scholarship, from which he graduated with a distinction.