Sounds of Blossom: celebrate the arrival of spring with Kew Gardens and the Royal College of Music

Sounds of Blossom returns to Kew Gardens for spring 2025
New compositions from students of the Royal College of Music inspired by Kew’s world-famous blooms
Reconnect with nature across London’s largest UNESCO World Heritage Site and explore seasonal horticultural highlights
Blossom-inspired afternoon tea available in The Botanical Brasserie
£1 entry available for recipients of Universal Credit

Sounds of Blossom returns to Kew Gardens this spring, with the premiere of new compositions by students from the Royal College of Music bringing this special season to life across Kew’s spectacular 320-acres. Offering a multisensory experience for visitors, Sounds of Blossom celebrates the best of Kew’s magnificent living collection with soundscapes and musical performances highlighting world-renowned magnolias and cherry blossoms.

New compositions from the Royal College of Music
The festival will feature seven bespoke commissions from Royal College of Music students, each of which will explore and celebrate the beauty of Kew’s landscape in spring. The vibrant colours of the blossom are complimented by gentle soundscapes which open up the spaces and draw our listening back into the sounds of nature which accompany these stunning spectacles.

Horticultural highlights
Spring at Kew Gardens is a spectacular season, as trees begin to flower and a kaleidoscope of bulbs including crocuses, daffodils and tulips start to bloom. Amidst Cherry Walk and Asano Avenue, visitors can see clouds of cherry blossom alongside naturalised tulips, set against the backdrop of the iconic Temperate House. Other must-visit locations include the Japanese Landscape, where a great white cherry (Prunus 'Taihaku') grows next to the Gateway. This species was thought to be extinct until the 1920s when an English plant collector, Collingwood Ingram, matched a tree growing in Sussex to a Japanese painting of a white cherry. Princess Walk will also be transformed by the annual spectacle of magnolias in bloom, with a plethora of pastel shades coming to life alongside the soundscapes.

As well as live weekend recitals, a blossom-inspired afternoon tea will also be available in The Botanical Brasserie for the duration of the festival, with menu highlights including warm scones with strawberry and lemon verbena preserve, lavender and chocolate macaroons and a honey blossom éclair.

Paul Denton, Head of Visitor Programmes and Exhibitions at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says: “This unique audio-treat within the stunning surroundings of Kew Gardens offers the perfect opportunity for visitors to soak up the beauty of spring and enhance their experience whilst listening to evocative compositions from the incredibly talented students from the Royal College of Music. We know that exposure to both nature and music offers incredible benefits for our physical and mental wellbeing, so it’s wonderful to be able to collaborate with the Royal College of Music once again to explore the magic of springtime across Kew with these new compositions.”

Professor Jonathan Cole, Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music, adds: “I'm delighted that we're collaborating again with Kew Gardens on their Sounds of Blossom Festival, giving our students an amazing opportunity to explore the deep interconnections between music and nature within an iconic and exquisitely beautiful environment. Working to a specific brief, engaging with the public and connecting to different industries teaches our students important skills, invaluable as they make the change from education to the professional life of a working composer, and we're deeply grateful to Kew for supporting such a collaboration.”

Royal College of Music student, Molly Frances Arnuk, a composer for the project: “Writing for Kew Gardens is such a great opportunity to experience a professional commission. Following their brief and coordinating with administrators and sound designers is valuable preparation to enter the industry. For my piece, I layered recordings of myself playing viola manipulated to sound like wind chimes as I wanted to share the sounds that I associate with peace and relaxation in nature.”

The Royal College of Music’s internationally respected composition faculty works closely with students to explore what it means to be a composer in today’s society, with distinctive courses such as Composition for Screen. The collaboration with Kew is one example of many links with artistic organisations, film schools, studios and industry professionals across the globe.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is dedicated to harnessing the power of plants and fungi to end the extinction crisis and secure a future for all life on Earth. With Kew’s world-leading research, global partnerships and beloved gardens – home to the world’s most diverse collections of plants and fungi – Kew is using its trusted voice to shape policy and practice worldwide. As a charity, Kew relies on the critical support of its visitors, not only to sustain the gardens, but to protect global plant and fungal biodiversity for the benefit of our planet and humanity.

ENDS

Sounds of Blossom admission:

Entry to Sounds of Blossom is included when purchasing a ticket to Kew Gardens.
The best value tickets can be booked in advance via kew.org.
£1 entry for recipients of Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Asylum Applicants and Legacy Benefits

For more information or images, please contact the Press Office at pr@kew.org / 0208 332 5607

Notes to Editors

Royal College of Music student composers

Ben Araujo
Ben Araujo is an American composer, sound artist, and pianist. Experimenting with sustained sound, Araujo explores its physicality and the continuous ways sound can evolve over time. Araujo creates immersive atmospheres to provide a meditative, attentive experience. He achieves this through electroacoustic music, instrumental music, and a combination of the two.

Molly Frances Arnuk
Brooklyn-born composer Molly Frances Arnuk is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree at the Royal College of Music. She has recently seen her work performed by the Quiron Quartet, the Ficino Ensemble, and the English National Ballet School. Molly is also an amateur violist and writer.

Finn Mattingly
Finn Mattingly (USA) is a composer, researcher and Humphrey Searle Scholar at the Royal College of Music. He writes for an international array of ensembles, including Dissolution Ensemble (CH), Barcelona Modern (ES), and áktapha Ensemble (GR), and researches the creative cognitive processes behind composition, in addition to educational work in the US, UK, and Denmark.

James Madrilejo
James Madrilejo is a Filipino-American composer and pianist. His upcoming projects include ‘Digital Village’, a social media-based piece exploring livestreaming as a method of performance, and a song cycle centred on American folk horror and cryptids.

Jacky Zhang
Jacky Zhang is 16 and is currently studying Piano and Composition in his fourth year at the Royal College of Music. His interests in songwriting and producing music compliment his compositional work.

Minh Trang Nguyễn
Minh Trang Nguyễn is a Vietnamese composer known for blending traditional Vietnamese music with Western instruments and techniques. She studied composition at the VNAM and won the 2nd ACL Tsang-Houei Hsu Memorial Prize. She has participated in international music festivals and, in 2021, was admitted to the RCM in London, where she studied with Kenneth Hesketh and received several scholarships.

Margot Pommellet
Margot Pommellet is a French composer and flautist based in Paris and London. Her works have been performed by renowned musicians like Augustin Dumay and Marc Coppey, with recordings by the Fidelio Trio. Alongside her studies with the Royal College of Music, she explores cultural policy at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

About Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world-famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding collections and scientific expertise in plant and fu ngal diversity, conservation, and sustainable development in the UK and around the globe. Kew’s scientists and partners lead the way in the fight against biodiversity loss and finding nature-based solutions to the climate crisis, aided by five key scientific priorities outlined in Kew’s Science Strategy 2021-2025. Kew Gardens is also a major international and top London visitor attraction. Kew’s 132 hectares of historic, landscaped gardens, and Wakehurst, Kew’s Wild Botanic Garden and ‘living laboratory’, attract over 2.5 million visits every year. Kew Gardens was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and celebrated its 260th anniversary in 2019. Wakehurst is home to the Millennium Seed Bank, the largest wild plant seed bank in the world and a safeguard against the disastrous effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. RBG Kew received approximately one third of its funding from Government through the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and research councils. Further funding needs to support RBG Kew’s vital scientific and educational work comes from donors, memberships and commercial activity including ticket sales. For tickets, please visit www.kew.org/kew-gardens/visit-kew-gardens/tickets. In the first six months since implementing a new accessibility scheme for those in receipt of Universal Credit, Pension Credit and Legacy Benefits, Kew has welcomed over 100,000 visitors with £1 tickets.

About the Royal College of Music
Opened in 1883, the Royal College of Music (RCM) is a world leading music conservatoire with a prestigious history and contemporary outlook. More than 900 undergraduate and postgraduate students come from over 50 countries and are taught in a dynamic environment, leaving the RCM to become the outstanding performers, conductors, and composers of the future. In 2024 the Royal College of Music was ranked the Global No. 1 institution for Performing Arts for the third year running and earned the inaugural top spot for Music in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

The Royal College of Music has trained some of the most important figures in British and international music including composers and performers such as Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Leopold Stokowski, Sir Hubert Parry, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Neville Marriner, Dame Joan Sutherland, Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Sarah Connolly, Tarik O’Regan, Gerald Finley, Lord Lloyd Webber, Sir James Galway, Anna Meredith MBE, Louise Alder and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Regular visitors to the Royal College of Music include Sir Thomas Allen, Sir Antonio Pappano, Alina Ibragimova and Lang Lang. Our recent honorary doctorates include Sir Antonio Pappano, Jonas Kaufmann, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Bryn Terfel, Steve Reich and Maxim Vengerov.