Doom and the Dooms Sean Shibe, 12 Ensemble, GBSR Duo, Oliver Leith

• Oliver Leith (b. 1990): All I Ever Wanted:
• 1 Leith: All I Ever Wanted 03:54
• Javelin Shearwater:
• 2 Leith: Javelin Shearwater 03:00
• (Title not known and incomplete):
• 3 Leith: (Title not known and incomplete) 01:32
• Lug:
• 4 Leith: Lug 05:16
• The Abider:
• 5 Leith: The Abider 04:09
• My Horse Named Dream:
• 6 Leith: My Horse Named Dream 04:55
• Donjon Droll:
• 7 Leith: Donjon Droll 03:07
• Old Times Away:
• 8 Leith: Old Times Away 03:51
• The Winch:
• 9 Leith: The Winch 06:41
• The Abider (Edit):
• 10 Leith: The Abider (Edit) 04:23
• Total Runtime 40:48

Info for Doom and the Dooms

Doom and the Dooms imagines a fictional band performing their greatest hits. As one might expect, the electric guitar is the frontman, though sometimes falls back to offer accompanying music for hazy string chorales and mark tree melodies. The band’s songs have a bittersweet aspect, with titles such as All I ever wanted, Javelin shearwater and My Horse Named Dream. Melting, melancholy harmonies sit alongside fast, virtuosic passagework for guitar, as well as the blurry microtonal string writing emblematic of Leith’s work.

Leith composes the idiosyncrasies of a live gig into the work – the band mumble to introduce their songs, and the players whistle along to melodies. “The guitar has cultural baggage”, Leith notes, “so I’m embracing it, rather than avoiding it. Its baggage is material.” It was premiered by the same forces at Wigmore Hall in June 2024. Shibe et al. present the work on 27 September at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the guitarist’s residency at the Southbank Centre.

GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble – longstanding Leith collaborators, integral to the creation of his debut chamber opera Last Days and string orchestra work Honey Siren – will be part of 118 performers premiering his grandest concert work to date in September at London’s Bold Tendencies. Garland promises a spectacular procession of sound, music and singing, drawing on EXAUDI (who premiered Leith’s Hallelujah amen in 2024), soprano Patricia Auchterlonie and a mixed amateur chorus; the choral refrains are written by Charlie Fox. 32 string and 16 brass players unite with a large battery of percussion and sampler keyboards to form an atypical orchestra, enveloping the audience in sound as the performers circulate. The choral forces are augmented by a horse, bicycles, car and other pedestrian detritus ‘played’ to create noise and rhythm.

Sean Shibe, guitar
12 Ensemble
GBSR Duo
Oliver Leith, vocals

Oliver Leith
is a London-based composer. He writes music that is “deadpan, subversive, quietly anarchic, disarmingly heart-sore and sweet-sour” (BBC Radio 3, Kate Molleson), which has been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov, the LA Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia, London Sinfonietta, members of the Philharmonia Orchestra, EXAUDI, and Trio Catch.

His works have appeared at the BBC Proms, Tanglewood Music Centre, Wigmore Hall, Aix Festival, Transit Festival, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Heidelberg Festival, Riga’s White Night Festival and Liszt Academy (Budapest). Accolades include an Ivor Novello award for Honey Siren (2019), a 2016 British Composer Award for A Day at The Spa, premiered by Kaleidoscope Saxophone Quartet, and the 2014 RPS Composer Prize.

He was previously Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s Doctoral Composer-in-Residence at the Royal Opera House. This led to the creation of Leith’s acclaimed debut chamber opera Last Days, which premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre in 2022 with a sold-out run of performances; it received its US premiere from the LA Philharmonic and Thomas Adès in February 2024 at Walt Disney Hall. Its first revival at Covent Garden in 2025 saw a sixteen-performance run sell out to critical acclaim. Garland, a visionary processional for chorus and orchestra, was commissioned by Bold Tendencies in 2025 and revived to acclaim in 2026; it makes its US debut with Wild Up in October 2026.

The 90-minute piece, with a text by Matt Copson and the composer, is based on Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film. Last Days traces the self-destructive spiral of a rock star escaped from rehab; its debut production, co-directed by Anna Morrissey and Matt Copson, starred Agathe Rousselle in the non-singing lead role of Blake, with costumes by Balenciaga. The opera features a recording of an Italian verismo­-style aria written for Caroline Polachek and produced by Danny L Harle. The world premiere recording with12 Ensemble, GBSR Duo and conductor Jack Sheen was released by Platoon in 2024. It makes its German debut at Theater Freiburg in a new production in 2027.

Recent large-scale works include Cartoon Sun, commissioned by the Hallé Concerts Society for Thomas Adès and Doom and the Dooms for electric guitar, keyboard, percussion and strings for Sean Shibe, GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble. will o wisp, a 19-minute work for strings, was co-commissioned by Manchester Collective and Det Norske Kammerorkester and funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants and premiered in 2022. In 2025 Leith created a celebrated new adaptation of Britten's Billy Budd with Ted Huffman for the Aix-en-Provence Festival - an intense, erotic, and eerie reimagining of Britten's score for keyboards and percussion.

Other orchestral works include Taxa (composed in 2013 and subsequently performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov), Dream Horse for soprano, bass, and chamber orchestra (commissioned by the 2018 Tanglewood Festival, conducted by Thomas Adès), and Pearly, goldy, woody, bloody, or, Abundance, performed by the BBC Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras.

In 2016/17 members of the London Symphony Orchestra premiered 664 love songs to cure heartache and Sexton Blakes, both for instrumental ensembles and video. Balloon for ensemble of nine players was premiered in 2018 by the London Sinfonietta and features on an all-Leith release from Another Timbre, with Richard Baker conducting Explore Ensemble. good day good day bad day bad day, a 45-minute work for keyboards and percussion composed in 2018 for George Barton and Siwan Rhys, is also available on Another Timbre. Other recordings include Hand Coloured with Loré Lixenberg and the London Sinfonietta (NMC), Aisha Orazbayeva playing Blurry Wake Song (SN Variations) and Uh huh, Yeah – described as a ‘miniature masterpiece’ by The Times – with the Hermes Experiment (Delphian). Other chamber works include The Folly on Dirge Hill, a cello suite for Anastasia Kobekina.

Ruisi Quartet featured Leith’s string quartet The big house on their eponymous album from Pentatone in 2023. Ben Goldscheider and Richard Uttley premiered Eeyore for horn and piano at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2024; it toured California as part of the Camerata Pacifica recital series in spring 2025. On a horse, on a hill, faraway, through fog and bonfire, Leith's second string quartet, premiered in July 2025 at the Spitalfields Festival with the Consone Quartet and has appeared at the Concertgebouw.

Booklet for Doom and the Dooms