Emily Howard was born in Liverpool, England, in 1979. She spent her formative years learning the cello, playing chess (she was British Junior Girls Chess Champion for 6 years) and composing for local orchestras including The Liverpool Mozart Orchestra and The Wirral Youth Orchestra. Always torn between parallel interests in science and music, Emily read mathematics and computation at Lincoln College, Oxford University, where she also received guidance in composition from Robert Saxton. She went on to complete a Masters in Composition with Adam Gorb at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) gaining a double distinction as well as the Soroptimist International Award for Composers. Emily is currently completing a PhD in Composition with John Casken at The University of Manchester, supported by a Victor Sayer Scholarship.

Commissions and performances include Dualities (RLPO’s Ensemble 10/10, Clark Rundell) subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December 2005 and Lachrymose (Southbank Sinfonia, Nicholas Cleobury), a commentary on Mozart’s Requiem, first performed on the occasion of the 250th Anniversary of the birth of Mozart in Canterbury Cathedral, December 2006. In 2007, Emily was selected for the prestigious LSO Discovery Panufnik Young Composers’ Scheme and this resulted in the composition of Lachrimae Antiquae Novae (London Symphony Orchestra, François-Xavier Roth) first performed in London, October 2007. More recently, Magnetite, commissioned by Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008 for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, opened the RLPO’s Capital of Culture season under the baton of Principal Conductor Vasily Petrenko.

This year, Emily has completed commissions from Endymion and the Sounds New Contemporary Music Festival 2008, The NMC Songbook, for release on the NMC label in 2009 and also for Liverpool City Council, where she is currently Composer in Residence. In July 2008, Liverpool – The World in One City, a concerto for solo basset clarinet, choir and orchestra united the Liverpool Youth Orchestra with local primary school choirs (300 children) and clarinetist Mark Simpson (BBC Young Musician 2006) in a concert to celebrate the Capital of Culture at the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool.

Future plans include a second orchestral commission for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, a residency at the annual Soundings Contemporary Music Festival organized by the Austrian Cultural Forum, London in May 2009 and a mixed-media composition for film, ensemble and dancer with Ensemble 10/10.

Emily teaches composition at the RNCM Junior School and the University of Leeds.