Sarah Llewellyn is a classically trained composer working in theatre, film, radio, circus and the concert stage nationally and internationally. Skills include composition, arrangement, orchestration, music directing, sound design, music production, recording, performing, workshop leading and teaching.
Inventive and versatile, she has composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles, choirs, circus bands, vocalists and actor musicians and large-scale spectacular outdoor events. She also creates soundscapes, electro-acoustic work and spoken word pieces.
She is currently working on music and sound design for a project in Zambia with Barefeet Theatre entitled BANSHEE which includes performance by 30 women from across Lusaka, then captured on film and screened in both Liverpool and Lusaka.
Sarah has recently composed the music for THE GHOST TRAIN arrival in a spectacular outdoor theatrical reimagining, commemorating the historic arrival of Locomotion No. 1 into Stockton harbour in 1825, and 200 years of passenger railway in September 2025, produced by Walk the Plank and Avanti Display Ltd. Her composition work was also to be featured in LIGHT NIGHT LEEDS, the UK’s largest annual arts and light festival in October 2025 and she has composed the music for a recent advertising campaign. Sarah will be composing for a production of BARTLEBY for Chung Ying Theatre in 2026.
Last year she composed the original music for The BBC Radio 3 Drama JUBILEE, one of a number of radio drama compositions she has completed. She was Musical Director for Shakespeare North Playhouse’s actor musician production ofTHE WIND IN THE WILLOWSChristmas 23/24 directed by Julia Samuels and Composer and Music Director forYERMA by Frederico Garcia Lorca, directed by Sophie Dillon Moniram at the Milton Court Theatre, Guildhall School, October 2023.
Other composing projects include 2023 LAMDA production of THE SEWING GROUP by E.V. Crowe, music for Mind The Gap’s climate change street show LEAVE THE LIGHT ON FOR ME touring festivals and directed by Joyce Lee and Nice Miles-Wildin, A TALE OF TWO CITIES directed by Dominic Chung, Chung Ying Theatre, spring 2023 at the Hong Kong Cultural Sector, 37 PLAYS PODCAST, for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4 drama Charles Dickens’ THE SIGNALMAN, adapted by Jonathan Holloway and produced by Pier Productions, broadcast on Christmas Day.
Sarah also works in community outreach and with charities. Over the pandemic she wrote the song, HOLD FAST with J Fox and G Winstanley for a well being NHS film by Wake The Beast, she also ran creative online workshops and worked as composer with Afrocats – a charity working with refugee and asylum seekers in Manchester, she has produced music for UK Charity Abortion Rights films and she continues to collaborate with her sister, Leah, on films for Reach Another Foundation – a medical charity working in Ethiopia for babies with spina bifida and hydrocephalus.
Sarah composed the music for a short film and was the composer and sound artist for a series of podcasts entitled INSPIRING WOMEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE INSPIRING researched with the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester in 2020 and worked on a short film entitled THE LAST CUCKOO shining a light on the life of Dennis Gould.
Sarah was composer in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company 2017-2019 on the Cameron Mackintosh Scheme. She composed for productions there including THE EARTHWORKS, MYTH & TALES FROM OVID, TRANSFORMATIONS (chamber concert piece) and an RSC film A STITCH IN TIME. Sarah is developing TRANSFORMATIONS for symphony orchestra.
She was composer and music director for ZARA, Mind The Gap’s 2019 epic outdoor production in partnership with Walk The Plank & Emergency Exit Arts. It premiered at Halifax’s Piece Hall in April and toured to the Imperial War Museum gardens, London in May to great acclaim.
Sarah has created sound art pieces for exhibitions including the GREENHAM WOMEN EVERYWHERE project commissioned by Scary Little Girls & The Heroine Collective with a UK tour Aug-Dec 2019.
2019 also saw the premiere in the USA in DC and San Jose of her song, KAKENYA’S DREAM. A commission for ‘HEAR HER SONG’, The Canales Project. A musical celebration of extraordinary women in partnership with United Nations Decade of Women.
LINK TO THE GHOST TRAIN – short video