Sante and Augustine - Biographies

Emily Hall, Composer (UK)

Emily Hall is currently the Gilbert and Eileen Edgar Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music. She is also the composer -in-residence at ccmix, the Xenakis centre of new music in Paris. Her music was recently featured in the Music of Today series at the Royal Festival Hall with musicians of the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Born in Brighton in 1978, Emily Hall began her composition studies at the age of 16 after she was deeply inspired by a composition workshop with Harrison Birtwistle based around his opera The Second Mrs Kong. She went on to read music at the University of York where she was extremely active both as a composer and a violinist. In 1999, Emily Hall moved to Paris to study orchestration privately with Yan Maresz. She then spent two years at the Royal College of Music, studying with Julian Anderson, where she received her Masters in Composition. Hall has attended various international composition courses including Darmstadt, Royaumont, Acanthes and the Britten­Pears School for Advanced Composition and she has been accepted by Tanglewood for summer 2004. Sante and Augustine is her first experience writing opera.

Kit Peel, Librettist (UK)

Kit Peel was born in London in 1974. After graduating from Edinburgh University, he worked as a reporter in South Africa for three years, writing news and investigative features for the Mail and Guardian, The Independent on Sunday and various magazines. He has travelled to many countries in Africa, including Rwanda. He returned to the UK in 2001, working for Reuters. He then helped establish and was news editor at Global Radio News, managing a network of 200 freelance reporters in 80 countries. During that time he wrote a novel, which will be published by Hyperion in 2005, and poetry. He is currently focusing on writing full-time.

All photos by Julian Brooks unless indicated.