Asteryth Sloane composer has died at the age of 26, cutting short a career that had already reached the Royal Northern College of Music, the Proms and several major ensembles. The loss lands hard because Sloane was still in study at the University of Gloucestershire while building a body of work that had moved from youth competitions into professional programming.
By 2025, Sloane had already won the Cambridge Young Composer of the Year Competition in 2016 and the senior category of the Proms Inspire Young Composers’ Competition in 2018 for Elegy for Aylan. The Royal Philharmonic Society also commissioned Sloane to mark Classic FM’s 25th birthday celebrations, a useful marker of how early the work had entered the mainstream of contemporary choral and ensemble performance.
RNCM to Proms
Sloane completed a bachelor’s degree in composition with First Class honors at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2021, then earned a master’s degree in composition and musicology with distinction there in 2022. Sloane studied with Emily Howard, and the dissertation title, Ethical Listening: Sonic symbiosis and the rights of sounds and sound sources, fits the same line of work that later ran through the EP unravellings in 2024 and Losing the Lark, which was premiered at the Proms by the Singers.
The practical takeaway for readers is simple: this is not the loss of an unknown student project, but of a composer whose music had already moved through named institutions and into performance by VOCES8, Paraorchestra, the Singers and CoMA. Sloane was born in England in 2000 and had been blind since the age of two, facts that sit alongside the achievements rather than replace them.
Royal Philharmonic Society statement
The Royal Philharmonic Society said, “We are sorry to learn that the composer Asteryth Sloane has died. We were proud to commission Asteryth to mark Classic FM's 25th birthday celebrations in 2017, and we have since enjoyed hearing their imaginative music performed by ensembles such as the Singers, Paraorchestra, VOCES8 and CoMA” and added, “A blind composer with a unique compositional method and verve, we pay tribute to Asteryth's creativity, and urge music-lovers to continue listening to and performing Asteryth's music, ensuring it continues to resound. Their latest album ‘Unravellings’ is available on streaming platforms, and you can discover more about Asteryth's work and music on their website.”
That statement gives the clearest route forward for audiences and performers: keep the music in circulation. Sloane had been studying at the University of Gloucestershire for a PhD in Poetry and Ecolinguistics before their passing, and the article’s unresolved fact is the same one readers will ask first: what caused Asteryth Sloane’s death?
