about
Zahrah Hutton is a guitarist, artist, and composer from London, based in Birmingham.
In both her compositional and visual practices, her work often explores repetition and balance within structures, communication, and the relationship between form and sound. From August 2024 to January 2025, Zahrah was an Artist in Residence at Stirchley Printworks, a print studio in South Birmingham. Zahrah is a Britten Pears Young Artist 2025-26, for Composition, Alternative Prformance, and Performance Art (CAPPA).
As a member of the Mela guitar quartet, Zahrah has performed in America, Canada, Norway, and across the UK, including live on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune. In 2025, the quartet released an album of original arrangements, ‘Overtures & Dances’, with contemporary classical label TRPTK, and completed an eight-week tour of America and Canada as winners of the Guitar Foundation of America international ensemble prize. This tour included the US premiere of Anthony Burgess' Concerto Grosso for four guitars and orchestra with the Stanford Philharmonia at the Bing Concert Hall, California.
Zahrah has played electric guitar with the Listening Project, and in the house band for Tell It to the Music, a free improvisation night responding to spoken word. In 2025 she was selected to participate in the guitar/electric guitar studio at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt. With theatre company ‘A Book of Portraits’, Zahrah has performed and improvised on acoustic guitar, lute, and banjo in multiple community music and theatre events, including an immersive set of folk tales, a wassail, and an homage to the 1575 arts festival for Elizabeth I, performed at Kenilworth Castle.
Zahrah graduated from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with first-class honours in 2023. In her second year she was awarded the Guitar Prize. Zahrah is also trained in the Kodály Method, holding Level 8 Kodály Musicianship.