Twenty British composers; twenty 12-minute compositions. The Olympic starting pistols may be silent for another few months, but the cultural warm-up to the 2012 Games has already begun. Launched on New Year’s Eve by the PRS for Music Foundation, 'New Music 20x12' – the organisation’s biggest arts commissioning programme to date – is a musical celebration of the spirit of the Olympics.

Composers including Anna Meredith, Julian Joseph, Graham Fitkin and Sheema Mukherjee are working with groups that range from brass bands and bell ringers to beatboxers and even a table tennis club, to create a diverse series of musical miniatures.

While many of the performers will come together at the Southbank Centre in July for a weekend festival of live performances, one group will be absent – the prisoners of HMP Lowdham Grange in Nottinghamshire who yesterday premiered Beyond This, a musical collaboration with Mark-Anthony Turnage.

‘To be honest, I probably enjoy projects like this even more than writing my own music,’ Turnage admits and, while the piece (which he describes sincerely as ‘one of the best things I’ve ever done’) bears the composer’s bluesy, allusive fingerprint, three of its four continuous movements are the work of the prisoner participants.

A triangle and a moody clarinet (no saxophone here, though it’s impossible not to hear the echoes of Your Rockaby in the third-movement clarinet solo) launch us into the opening section; two solo voices mimic the waves they’re singing about, imitative phrases rolling in continuous pulsing patterns. Musical abstraction gives way to more grounded harmony as chorus and an orchestra of guitars, keyboard, drum kit and bongos join in, bringing a lilting Caribbean swell to the sea picture.

Spoken text releases into solo rap, and a generous pop song emerges, whose chorus unites participants in a celebration of life beyond restrictions and confines. While the darker frustrations of incarceration seem suggested in the percussive keyboard chords of the middle section, the conclusion is one of hope as we return to the opening sea music – its harmonies and textures now bulked out into thick, anthemic celebration.

‘I felt a bit panicky about performing in front of people,’ a prisoner admits afterwards, ‘but you have to build your confidence otherwise you won’t get anywhere in life.’ Polished performance though this was, it’s a project about rather more than just music. Conceived in conjunction with the Irene Taylor Trust, which has overseen Music in Prisons since 1995, it allows participants to create something out of nothing, something of their own.

‘The people who take part are not necessarily musicians, which is important,’ explains Sara Lee, artistic director of Music In Prisons. ‘People deem things like self-confidence, self-esteem “soft skills”, but often they are the hardest to learn and the most vital. If you feel that you’ve achieved something you take your different attitude into your work, your dealings with people. All sorts of great things happen when you feel good about something you’ve done.’

Alexandra Coghlan

'Beyond This' will be screened at the Southbank Centre in July and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on August 18. The work will be available to download from the NMC website on August 27 and you will also be able to hear a free excerpt on the Gramophone Player.