Nigel Osborne is a composer and human rights activist. He is co-chair of the World Economic Forum on Culture and emeritus professor of music the University of Edinburgh. His works have been featured in most major international festivals and performed by many leading orchestras and ensembles, from the Moscow to the Berlin Symphony Orchestras, and from the Philharmonia of London to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has had close relationships with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Sinfonietta, Hebrides Ensemble and Ensemble Intercontemporain, Paris, and has composed extensively for the theatre. He is winner of the Opera Prize of Radio Suisse Romande and Ville de Geneve, the Netherlands Gaudeamus Prize, the Radcliffe Award and the Koussevitzky Award of the Library of Congress, Washington. Professor Osborne studied composition with Kenneth Leighton, Egon Wellesz, Arnold Schoenberg, and Witold Rudzinski. He also studied at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, Warsaw.