I turn your sketches, MIDI and demos into scores and parts for chamber ensembles, orchestras and bands. Each project is shaped around your music, your players and the way it will be performed or recorded.
for producers · artists · chamber groups · composers · arrangers
Any make-up up to eight parts — a quartet behind a vocal, a wind quintet, strings with winds, a piano trio.
II
Strings
for producers · artists · labels · arrangers · film and stage
Writing for five string sections: first and second violins, violas, cellos and double basses. The arrangement is shaped around your ensemble, your music and the sound you want to achieve.
III
Orchestra
for composers · screen and game production · orchestras · commissioners
Concert, opera, musical theatre, screen, game. From a piano score to a full pit; from a single cue to a full-evening opera.
Your musical ideas guide the orchestration, from the character of a single line to the shape of the full ensemble.
IV
Wind & Brass Band
for band directors · school and community ensembles · service bands · publishers
Concert band, brass band and marching band, scored for your available players and their experience. Instrumental ranges, essential doublings and cues are tailored to the ensemble, with the intended difficulty agreed in advance.
V
Recording
for producers · screen and game production · artists · commissioners
Recording services are also available, alongside orchestration and arrangement or for an existing score. Email me to discuss your recording requirements.
Every orchestration or arrangement includes transposed and concert-pitch scores, a complete set of instrumental parts, and an audio mock-up. Notation is supplied as PDF and MusicXML; the mock-up is a separate audio file. Any source-file requirements are agreed in your brief.
Score and part preparation
Clear bar numbers and consistent rehearsal marks across the score and parts, with consolidated multirests and cues where needed.
Practical bowings, breath marks, divisi and desk assignments suited to the music and the ensemble.
For picture-based projects, timecode, cue timings and frame rate agreed in the brief.
From your brief to the finished parts
Submit your brief and receive an enquiry reference.
I review the music and agree the service, deliverables, fixed fee, any discount, and start and delivery dates in writing.
Approve the agreement and pay the 50% deposit to reserve the agreed slot.
Review the score and mock-up; two rounds of revisions within the brief are included.
After approval and the balance payment, receive the final score, parts, MusicXML and audio mock-up. For credited projects, limited portfolio display is permitted under the contract after authorised public release and subject to any embargo and necessary third-party permissions. Paid no-credit projects are excluded from portfolio use.
Composition commissions and score and parts preparation for music written elsewhere are also welcome, with the scope agreed individually.
02 / Selected work
Selected work
Hear the music and explore the score. Compare a composer's piano score with my orchestration, or listen to examples from dance drama, art song and chamber music.
Opera · orchestration from a piano score
Sowing Wheat at the Autumn Equinox
Qiufen Zhongmai Zheng Dangshi
An excerpt from an opera first performed in Beijing in 2021. Russell Jia orchestrated this scene from the piano accompaniment score supplied by the composer.
Audio excerpt 0:46
Listen to the opening 46 seconds, then compare the composer's piano score with Russell's orchestration below.
The first 22 bars of Russell's orchestration. The final page ends at bar 22.
Art song · voice & full symphony orchestra
Love Between Sea and Sky
Ai Zai Tian Hai Jian
An art song for voice and full symphony orchestra. Working from the composer's single vocal melody, Russell Jia developed the harmony and the complete orchestral arrangement.
Full recording 3:21
A complete live recording of the singer and full symphony orchestra. All instrumental parts are performed by musicians.
Every project is quoted individually, based on its ensemble, source material, scope and delivery date. Share your brief or email me directly. I’ll review the material and discuss the next steps with you.
Tell me about your music, the ensemble and the material you have. Submit your brief here and I’ll reply by email with a tailored quote after reviewing it.
How your enquiry information is used. No account or payment is needed to enquire. Your final quote and delivery date follow a review of the material.
Step 1 of 3
The person behind the music
Composer first. Orchestrator by instinct.
I am a composer first, and an orchestrator because of it. Writing my own music is what makes a piano sketch legible to me as a full score: the voices it implies, the counterpoint it leaves room for, the bars where the texture has to thin. My training sits in two traditions at once — Western orchestral practice and Chinese instrumental writing — which is why scores that need dizi, xiao, erhu or guzheng to sit inside a symphonic texture, rather than beside it, tend to find their way to me.
Seventeen years in professional composition and orchestration. Orchestrations for five operas. Three original musicals — one for live symphony orchestra, one recorded with symphonic forces, one for live chamber ensemble. Five symphonic works, three for symphonic band, three for marching band — among them a commission from the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, performed at the 2019 show — and several dozen orchestrations and arrangements for symphony orchestra. Concert works include Kongshan Night Rain, a four-movement chamber piece for dizi, xiao, cello and harp.
Manchester has also given me a different kind of stage. As CMC (Chinese Music Classroom) Guest Composer, I wrote and staged Journey to the West in 2026 — a bilingual musical theatre work performed entirely by the primary-age students of Chetham's School of Music, voices and live chamber ensemble carrying one of China's oldest stories into a British school hall.
Composition commissions are welcome and are quoted by conversation.
Working method
Working remotely with clients across the UK, Europe, North America and Japan. A fixed fee and schedule are agreed after reviewing your material. 50% on commission, two rounds of revision, and score and parts delivered together.
Notation
Scores and parts supplied as PDF and MusicXML. Let me know if you also need notation source files.
