Judith Weir, composer

Born: 1954 in Cambridge, England

Education: studied composition with John Tavener as a young woman; attended Cambridge University and studied with Robin Holloway

Notable compositions: operas include A Night at the Chinese Opera, The Vanishing Bridegroom and Blond Eckbert; King Harald’s Saga; The welcome arrival of rain for orchestra; Tiger Under the Table for chamber ensemble; Piano Trio Two

Commissions: collaboration with Margaret Williams on a one-hour television opera Armida commissioned by BBC’s Channel 4; woman.life.song, a song cycle commissioned for Jessye Norman; We are Shadows, written for Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and three choruses

As a professor: taught composition at Glasgow’s University and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama; Fromm Foundation Visiting Professor at Harvard University during 2004; Research Professor at Cardiff University; has also had visiting professorships at Oxford University and Princeton University

Awards and posts: from 1995 to 2000, Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival in London; from 1995 to 1998, Composer in Association for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; in 2007 she was presented with the Queen’s Medal for Music by Her Majesty the Queen and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies; in 2008 the BBC Symphony Orchestra hosted a three-day retrospective of her music at the Barbican Center in London