Laura Jurd is a British award-winning trumpet player, composer and bandleader and BBC New Generation Artist for 2015-2017. Highly active throughout the UK scene, Laura has developed a formidable reputation as one of the most creative young musicians to emerge from the UK in recent years.

Having risen to critical acclaim upon the release of her debut album ‘Landing Ground’ in 2012 featuring the Ligeti Quartet, Laura has since released two albums as a composer and band-leader. The latter was the 2017 Mercury-nominated, debut release from Laura’s long-running band Dinosaur – one of the most creative and distinctive releases from a UK jazz ensemble in recent years. Described by All About Jazz as a musician who ‘embraces melody, harmony and groove as much as she provokes with blasts of dissonance and gutsy angularity’, it is her ability to combine the soft with the abrasive, the calm with the fiery, that makes her music-making so compelling.

As a composer Laura has written music for a range of ensembles including the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Ligeti Quartet and the Northern Sinfonia with commissions from the likes of BBC Radio 3 and the EFG London Jazz Festival. She has also recently joined the faculty at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance as a teacher of composition. In 2015 Laura received the Parliamentary Jazz Award for ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ and in the past has been shortlisted for a BASCA British Composer Award, received the Dankworth Prize for Jazz Composition and the Worshipful Company of Musician’s Young Jazz Musician of the Year award.

In Sept 2016, Dinosaur released their debut album ‘Together, As One’ on Edition Records.