Katie Chatburn

Manchester based composer Katie Chatburn trained at the Royal Academy of Music followed by an MMus at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 2016 she was awarded the Associate of the Royal Academy of Music for her work within the music industry. She works as a professional composer, orchestrator and community workshop leader. 

In 2017 Katie formed Ignition Orchestra as conductor and arranger. Following their debut at Liverpool International Festival, the orchestra has performed to sell out audiences at venues including The Barbican and Eventim Apollo and The Royal Albert Hall as part of the Garage Classical project. The project signed to Sony, releasing Garage Classical the album in 2019 featuring artists including Paloma Faith, Lily Allen, Raleigh Ritchie and Emeli Sande and including the hit re-release of Flowers by the Sugababes. 

Katie has worked on arrangements for a range of UK orchestras including the BBC Concert Orchestra and Chineke Orchestra and for artists such as MJ Cole, Aloe Blacc, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Ella Henderson, Shaznay Lewis, Lady Blackbird and Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy). She recently composed Bassline Symphony for Bradford City of Culture, performed by Opera North in 2025 alongside DJ’s Jamie Duggan, TS7 and DJQ. Katie works regularly with artists from the prestigious Liverpool International Festival Academy and for BBC Radio 2 Piano Rooms, with her arrangement for Wichita Lineman recently featured on the Appleton’s 2026 EP Side by Side. 

Credits for arrangements and orchestrations include work for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, including recently writing music for the ITV drama The Vardys and acclaimed short films Body/Land (2026) and Rosie (2023). She has composed original scores for radio drama including Radio 4’s Hunting of the Snark featuring Tony Robinson and Christabel for Radio 3. Orchestration for dramas including Endeavour and Victoria and Work on feature films includes orchestration and arranging work for Scott-Free production Labyrinth, The Next Human, This Beautiful Fantastic and Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Katie worked in the music department at Abbey Road for the Bond films Skyfall and Spectre assisting Global Music. 

Katie is passionate about community outreach work and has delivered workshops across different sectors of the community for Opera North, Liverpool Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and Music for Youth. She was awarded a Diploma in Sound Arts Therapy by the British Academy of Sound Therapy in 2023. Katie was Artistic Director for Brighter Sound’s Manchester Hill programme and composer/conductor on the city wide Peterloo events From the Crowd and Protest Music. As an academic and writer, Katie was co-author of The Musicians and Songwriters Yearbook for Bloomsbury Press and has contributed articles to various other academic music and soundscape publications. She co-wrote the Royal Northern College of Music Popular Music degree alongside working as a consult for the ABRSM on music theory and popular music. In 2021, Katie was awarded a Leverhulme Trust PhD scholarship to investigate the impact of sound within the city environment. Based at The School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester and is currently engaging with community groups across Manchester using create and inclusive methods to explore the impact of soundscape.