Lloyd Coleman

Lloyd Coleman is a British composer, clarinettist and was the Associate Music Director of Paraorchestra from 2017 until 2025.

A dynamic and chameleonic musician, his work spans from concert halls to theatres, open-air festivals to street parades, recording studios to TV and radio both nationally and internationally.

He was instrumental in the development of the award-winning ensemble Paraorchestra, the world’s only large-scale ensemble of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians. A founding member since 2012, he later served as the group’s Associate Music Director, delivering groundbreaking performances at major UK festivals including Glastonbury, the BBC Proms, WOMAD and playing on numerous recordings and television projects.

Lloyd created and performed in The Colour of Dinosaurs, a family show inspired by the research of renowned palaeontologist Dr Jakob Vinther. Made in collaboration with performance collective Otic, Bristol Old Vic and Polka Theatre (and supported by an Unlimited UK Partner Award), The Colour of Dinosaurs toured across England with nearly 100 performances.

Lloyd also scored the feature documentary Untethered, which followed the record-making attempt of Melanie Barratt to become the first blind woman to solo swim the English channel. The film was supported by and first shown on Sky Sports in November 2024.

Other recent composing highlights include Latent Bloom, inspired by the work of photographer Jack Latham and performed by Paraorchestra on a four-date UK tour; Luminescence, recorded by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Ben Palmer for The Music and Meditation Podcast on BBC Sounds; and a new original score for the Irish animation short Adam Saves Christmas, broadcast by RTE during their Christmas Day schedule. He has written four pieces for the ABRSM’s Graded Exam Syllabus.

Outside of composing and performing, Lloyd has been Chair of the Classical Council at the Ivors Academy, and a category judge for the Ivors Composer Awards, Royal Philharmonic Society Awards and BBC Young Composer. He is an active member of the South West Area Council for Arts Council England, sits on the advisory committee for Bristol Beacon’s Creative Learning and Engagement department and is a trustee of UCAN.

He has presented BBC Proms concerts for television, made guest appearances on In The Studio for BBC World Service, This Classical Life and Music Matters for BBC Radio 3, Archive on 4 for BBC Radio 4, YolanDa’s Band Jam for CBeebies, and numerous documentaries for Sky Arts and BBC Four fronted by Charles Hazlewood.

Born and raised in South Wales, Lloyd won a place at Chetham’s School of Music in his teens and joined the clarinet section of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Later, he studied composition with Gary Carpenter at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He now lives in Bristol.