PJA and the Soho Orchestra
The PJA Soho Orchestra was founded in 2024 as a composition collaboration between Arthur Elletson and Phil Lee. In January 2024, Phil Lee, a retired musician, unearthed an old composition he had created over half a century ago and approached London conservatoires to seek support to realise a first public performance. Arthur Elletson, a KCL graduate, took up the challenge and so began a unique collaboration between two musicians/composers a generation apart.
London: Past and Present, 6 June 2025
Arthur Elletson composed in his first symphony in early 2025, inspired by his experiences of London, both as a student moving to the city from his home near Blackpool, and hearing about his family who has lived in Streatham in his younger years. The music was cinematic, reflecting Elletson’s love of film scores as a means to demonstrate the relevance of classical music and the orchestra as a vehicle for emotional responses to specific places and times.
Arthur teamed up with his long-time collaborator Phil Lee to write four works inspired by the history of London. Phil has lived in London his entire life, and so the music began to encompass a wider, social history of London that brought together both lived and academic history of the city.
This project was equally exciting as for the first time in the group’s history, we teamed up with fifty-five musicians from across London, all of whom had their own stories to tell. I performed principal trumpet, but shared the stage with life-long Londoners, those who moved to London from the rest of the UK, and many international students and recent graduates, all with their own experiences of the city. The work was conducted by Sofia Grigoriadou, who herself moved to London from Greece, and now studies Orchestral Conducting at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Zurich, Switzerland. Previously she participated in the Royal Academy of Music’s Glover-Edwards Conducting programme, and led projects in Trinity Laban’s internationally renowned CoLab festival. She worked with the PJA and the Soho Orchestra to help bring out the different tales of London from the musicians. The process sought to empower both musicians and composers to bring out a wide range of tales through the music.
We performed the work in King’s College London Chapel. Located at the heart of the Strand, surrounded by both Somerset House and London’s West End, the central location of the performance provided synergy to the music that was being performed.
PJA and the Soho Orchestra seeks both to provide opportunities for new composers, but equally to allow opportunities for the musicians to perform their own stories in the process. This project actively sought to embrace elements of history and narrative through classical music beyond simple programmatic programming of repertoire, and to tell new stories by allowing new compositions to be performed.
Photograph credits: Harry Elletson Photography
The Rest Between The Notes, 8 November 2025
In November 2025, we organised a third concert for the PJA and the Soho Orchestra. We returned to the Club for Acts and Actors in Covent Garden to perform a concert in tribute to former committee member, Dave Power. We performed six brand new works for chamber orchestra by Elletson and Lee. In these new compositions, the pair started getting playful with intertextual references from classical composers, and considering the role of new compositions with the past.
The concert featured a smaller ensemble, including strings, oboe, bassoon, clarinet and piano. The music was inspired by film music; the pair’s desire for music to tell specific narratives was telling. The concert sold out, with not an empty seat in the auditorium.
The concert was conducted by again Sofia Grigoriadou, who previously conducted the premiere of Arthur’s symphony in June 2025. Grigoriadou’s ability to consult the orchestra in the process enables these new compositions to take on a life of their own.
The tribute to Dave Power also reflected the need to remember those who help the arts to flourish. The orchestra exists to provide opportunities not typically offered to musicians in London, to perform new music otherwise not commissioned, and to demonstrate the relevance of London as a cultural centre for new orchestral repertoire.
Photograph credits: Harry Elletson Photography
Soho Sunsets, 03rd August 2024
In 2024, PJA and the Soho Orchestra performed their first concert. Phil Lee is a professional musician who has worked in London’s performing arts industry for the last 40 years. In the 1970s, Phil composed a piece of music that was never recorded. In early 2024, he found his original sheet music in piano form and reached out to conservatoire students to see if the piece could be recorded.
His efforts led him to Arthur Elletson, an aspiring composer. Together, the pair workshopped the piece for a small chamber orchestra. I was approached by Elletson to help produce a concert featuring this work, and to perform trumpet in the ensemble. We realised this was an opportunity to feature more new compositions in a short hour-long programme, and produced a programme featuring six new works.
PJA and the Soho Orchestra premiered these compositions at the Club for Acts and Actors (CAA) based in the heart of Covent Garden. It’s a small intimate venue in Soho, and this contributed to the naming of the orchestra. The group sought to provide life into the classical music scene in the heart of London. The group also sought to demonstrate a range of voices and backgrounds in the ensemble. The final group featured students and recent graduates from across London, including Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, King’s College London, London School of Economics and early career musicians.
The group hopes to build and grow, performing works by a range of composers. Recent reports have highlighted that while there is much more effort in programming new music, often these are miniscule in comparison to historical composers. PJA and the Soho Orchestra seeks to build upon these efforts, and to allow musicians across the city the opportunity to perform these new works. There is a growing group of musicians eager to contribute to this effort, and PJA and the Soho Orchestra hopes to be a leading voice in supporting that effort.
Photo Credits: James Klug
