Monika Dalach Sayers is a composer, sound designer, and multimedia artist based in London, UK. She has a specialist background in contemporary classical music and sound art. 

​​

Her music refers to broad references of pop culture and addresses a range of current and social issues, including environmental pollution of textile and plastic waste. Her approach to making music is driven by research and sound experimentation to develop cutting-edge and thought-provoking projects. In her compositional practice, she blends contemporary electronic textures with traditional ensemble scoring, working across acoustic, electro-acoustic, and electronic music. In her artistic projects, she seeks new hybrid forms of musical expression crossing over art genres and working with text and video. Her various interests manifest in the fields of music, theatre, text, and video art, and her compositions are often complemented across each. She aims to deliver projects that are cutting-edge, innovative, and exciting. 

​

In 2024, Monika was appointed to the London Symphony Orchestra Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers' Scheme. She recently composed the music for The New Real, a new political play by David Edgar produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in association with Headlong Theatre. Monika completed a Master's in Classical Composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, studying composition with Professor Malcolm Singer, and dramatic writing with Dr. Stephen Plaice. In 2015, she graduated from The Academy of Music in Lodz with a Bachelor's in Classical Composition, studying composition with Dr. Olga Hans. Also in 2015, she graduated from The University of Lodz with a Bachelor's in Creative Writing & Cultural Studies. For two years in a row, across 2017/2018 and 2018/2019, Monika was awarded a Junior Artist Fellowship in Classical Composition and Dramatic Writing at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In 2019, she completed the Opera Making and Writing course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in Association with The Royal Opera House in London. In 2020, she completed the Experimental Video and Moving Image Course at London College and Communication.

​

Monika has taken part in contemporary music courses such as Next Generation at the Donaueschinger Musiktage in Germany (2017), International Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt in Germany (2018), and International Summer Courses for Composers Synthetis in Radziejowice, Poland (2015, 2016). She has participated in masterclasses with Alexander Schubert, Johannes Kreidler, Mark Andre, Ashley Fure, Stefan Prins, Marco Stroppa, Ramon Lazkano, Julian Anderson, Agata Zubel, and Zygmunt Krauze.

​

Monika Dalach has written music for DECODER Ensemble (Germany), Plus-Minus Ensemble (UK), EXAUDI Ensemble (UK), Workers Union Ensemble (UK), Trio Layers (Poland), Ensemble Kompopolex (Poland), TWOgether Duo (Poland). She has worked in collaboration with independent artists including choreographers Ruby Frances Jones (USA) and Stephanie Handiijska (Bulgaria); moving image artists Liza Gusarova and Vera Romanova (UK); pianists Małgorzata Walentynowicz (Poland) and Felix Nagl (Germany); marimbist Ewelina Hajda (Poland); dancers Enzo Pauchet (France), Constance Diard (France), Fang-Yun Yang (Taiwan); photographer Maja Ngom (Poland/UK); librettists Oge Nwosu (UK) and Leo Doulton (UK). Monika has collaborated with workshOPERA at the London Transport Museum project "SoundTracks". She wrote an original soundtrack to the live dance performance "9.81", an interdisciplinary project that premiered in 2015 at the Szwalnia Theatre in Lodz.

​

Her music has been played and commissioned by contemporary music festivals such as Heroines of Sound, Music Current, Hamburg International Music Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival, New Music Dublin, Musica Electronica Nova, Sacrum Profanum Festival, International Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt, Musica Privata Festival, Musica Moderna Festival, including venues such as the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Wigmore Hall London, The National Concert Hall in Dublin, The Warsaw Philharmonic, The National Forum of Music (NFM) in Wrocław, Poland, The Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic in Lodz, The Place London, London Transport Museum, Milton Court Concert Hall, City University in London, Collegium Novum/the Jagiellonian University in Crakow and Indiana University.

​

Her music was featured on the New Music Show on BBC Radio 3.

​

In 2021 the project Kobiety Są | Women are was supported by The President of the City of Lodz Artistic Scholarship. In 2018 she was awarded the Marshal of the City of Lodz Artistic Scholarship in Composition. Whilst a student, Monika was a winner of the prestigious Witold Lutoslawski Scholarship awarded by Witold Lutoslawski's Society for study abroad (2016) and was awarded Guildhall School's Tracy Chadwell Prize (2017). She is a winner of The Pulse of Literature Festival Prize for the New Dramatic Play - Dinner for Two (2015). She was one of five finalists in the USA International Composition Contest for a harp solo piece (2016). She has also received the following awards and prizes: 1st prize at the Little Symphony Competition organized by the Academy of Music in Lodz for Pandora (2014), 2nd Prize at the 56th Tadeusz Baird Competition for Young Composers organized by the Association of the Polish Composers (2015), and 3rd Prize at the National Competition for Electroacoustic Composition organized by the Oskar Kolberg's Philharmonic in Kielce, Poland (2014).