A PUPIL of Skipton Girls High School has won the prestigious BBC Proms Inspire competition.

Young composer, Isabel Woods, 18, beat hundreds of others with her piece 'Inhale. Exhale' to win the senior category of the contest, which sets out to both nurture and champion new music written by school aged young people.

Isabel, who lives in Bingley, attends

Yorkshire Young Musicians, a Centre for Advanced Training in Music, at Leeds College of Music, and has just completed her A Levels.

The competition judging panel included

Anna Meredith, Dobrinka Tabakova, Sally Beamish, and BBC Proms director, David Pickard.

Isabel's piece, along with other section winners, will be performed by the Aurora Orchestra in a dedicated Prom on August 22.

Mr Pickard said 20 years after it was founded, the BBC Proms Inspire competition continued to champion the new music of some of the UK’s most promising young composers.

"This year’s BBC Proms Inspire competition winners and highly-commended entrants have been some of the most promising young composers to have emerged from this competition and come from a wide range of different backgrounds," he said.

“I am delighted that BBC Proms Inspire will once again take its place at the heart of the festival, offering outstanding mentoring and learning opportunities for all its composers as they develop their artistic ambitions.”

Isabel said Yorkshire Young Musicians had given her and many others in Yorkshire the opportunity to be tutored by some of the very best professional musicians in the North.

"I believe that without Yorkshire Young Musicians, I probably wouldn’t even be composing as seriously as I am today. I personally believe there are huge discrepancies in high-quality musical tutoring between the North and the South and Yorkshire Young Musicians is making a huge difference to close that gap," she said.

Penny Stirling, director of Yorkshire Young Musicians, said: “I am so delighted that Isabel has received this national recognition of her ability. She has been an excellent student and is a truly holistic musician of exceptional promise."

Yorkshire Young Musicians is now auditioning for Yorkshire’s next musical star. To find out more, visit the website:

yorkshireyoungmusicians.org.uk