Festival
Performance Festival 2026
Supported by the Colwinston Charitable Trust
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Career Insight: Music and Optimism
What can a sustainable career in music look like, and why is there still reason for optimism?
Join the V&A Youth Collective as they host a conversation with artists, exploring the challenges and possibilities of building a career in the creative industries.
From navigating different career pathways to developing resilience and improving accessibility, speakers will share honest insights into the challenges they face, and the opportunities shaping the future of music and sound.
Joining us for the event will be
From navigating different career pathways to developing resilience and improving accessibility, speakers will share honest insights into the challenges they face, and the opportunities shaping the future of music and sound.
Joining us for the event will be
- Electra Perivolaris, Composer and Pianist
- Victoria Karlsson, Inter-disciplinary artist and researcher
This event is hosted and co-produced by the V&A Youth Collective.
The panel talk will be live streamed to online audiences from the V&A Museum. Book a ticket on this page to join the event live at the museum, or sign up here to watch the conversation online.
Electra Perivolaris is a British-Greek composer and pianist. Her work is rooted in the landscapes of her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran and her family’s origins on the Greek island of Chios. Engaging with the natural world as a fragile living organism, her music often explores ecological processes, memory, and myth through vivid sonic imagery. Described as “A Classical Star of the Future” (BBC Introducing), “One of a new generation of female trailblazers” (BBC Radio 3), and praised for her “razor-sharp musical imagination” (The Telegraph), she is emerging as a distinctive voice in contemporary classical music. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal Academy of Music, Electra will complete a Doctorate of Philosophy in Composition at the University of Oxford in 2026. She was the inaugural Young Classical Artists Trust Composer Fellow (2024/25), a Royal Philharmonic Society Composer (2022/23) and a PRS Foundation Classical:NEXT Fellow (2026).
Electra Perivolaris | Home
Victoria Karlsson is an artist and researcher working across sound art and performance. In her practice and research, she explores cultural aspects of sound and listening through performance, visual and text scores, writing and sculpture. She is interested in working with ‘inner sound and listening’, which she defined through her practice based PhD research at CRISAP, UAL as “sounds we hear in our minds, similar to, but different from, an inner voice." (Karlsson, 2022). She is also interested in intersections between sound, listening, queer theory and affect.
Electra Perivolaris is a British-Greek composer and pianist. Her work is rooted in the landscapes of her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran and her family’s origins on the Greek island of Chios. Engaging with the natural world as a fragile living organism, her music often explores ecological processes, memory, and myth through vivid sonic imagery. Described as “A Classical Star of the Future” (BBC Introducing), “One of a new generation of female trailblazers” (BBC Radio 3), and praised for her “razor-sharp musical imagination” (The Telegraph), she is emerging as a distinctive voice in contemporary classical music. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal Academy of Music, Electra will complete a Doctorate of Philosophy in Composition at the University of Oxford in 2026. She was the inaugural Young Classical Artists Trust Composer Fellow (2024/25), a Royal Philharmonic Society Composer (2022/23) and a PRS Foundation Classical:NEXT Fellow (2026).
Electra Perivolaris | Home
Victoria Karlsson is an artist and researcher working across sound art and performance. In her practice and research, she explores cultural aspects of sound and listening through performance, visual and text scores, writing and sculpture. She is interested in working with ‘inner sound and listening’, which she defined through her practice based PhD research at CRISAP, UAL as “sounds we hear in our minds, similar to, but different from, an inner voice." (Karlsson, 2022). She is also interested in intersections between sound, listening, queer theory and affect.
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