The Umbrella - Biographies

Elena Langer, Composer (Russia)

Elena Langer studied composition, musicology and piano at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. She moved to London in 1999 and studied with Julian Anderson at the Royal College of Music. Currently, she is working on a PhD at the Royal Academy of Music with Simon Bainbridge. Elena was the Jerwood Composer in Association with the Almeida Theatre (2002/03).

Her recordings are Transformations (1998) for violin and piano and Reflection (1994) for piano solo on the Black Box label (UK); Havdala (1998) for male choir on the Gramzapis label (Russia); The Re-turn (1999) for violin, oboe, cello and harpsichord on the Fond Vozvrazhenie label (Russia).

Recent performances include Platch (2001) for violin solo and string orchestra at St John's, Smith Square, and subsequently at the Moscow Autumn Festival; Coda (2002) for organ at the Royal Festival Hall; On Two Shores (2002) for ensemble at the Queen Elizabeth Hall; a mini-opera Ariadne (2002) at the Almeida Opera Festival, at the Britten and Strauss Festival in Aldeburgh and at the Moscow Festival Vozvrazhenie; a chamber opera The Girl of Sand (2003) at the Almeida Opera Festival; In the Dark (2003) for ensemble at the Gaudeamus Music Week in the Netherlands; Late Autumn Lullaby I and Late Autumn Lullaby II (2003) at the Purcell Room.

Lavinia Greenlaw, Librettist (UK)

Lavinia Greenlaw was born in 1962 in London where she still lives. She has published three books of poems with Faber: Night Photograph (1993), A World Where News Travelled Slowly (1997) and Minsk (2003), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, T.S. Eliot and Forward Poetry Prizes. She has also published a novel, Mary George of Allnorthover, which won France's Prix du Premier Roman, and a collaboration with the photographic artist Garry Fabian Miller, Thoughts of a Night Sea. She lectures at Goldsmiths College and reviews for the Guardian, TLS and New York Times.

In 2000, she was awarded a NESTA fellowship in order to pursue her interest in optical technologies and the history of perception. Her work for radio includes programmes about the Arctic and Baltic, the solstices and equinoxes, and an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Night and Day. She wrote the libretto for Ian Wilson's chamber opera Hamelin, which was produced in Germany and Ireland in 2003.

All photos by Julian Brooks unless indicated.