Rebecca Saunders was born in London in 1967. She studied music,majoring in performance (violin) and composition, at EdinburghUniversity, and studying composition from1991-1994 with Wolfgang Rihmat the Karlsruhe Music College in Germany. From 1994-1997 she held thePremier Scholarship at the Edinburgh University for a PhD inComposition with Nigel Osborne.

She has received various composition prizes including the Ernst vonSiemens Förderpreis, the ARD and BMW AG musica viva Prize, the PaulHindemith Prize, the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Award forChamber Music in 2008 and the GEMA Deutscher Musikautorenpreis forInstrumental Music 2010. In 2009 she became a member of the BerlinAcademy of Arts, and was the Capel-Compositeur at the StaatskapelleDresden for the 2009/2010 season. She was tutor at the DarmstadtFerienkurse in 2010.

Rebecca Saunders has expanded her spectrum of musical genre since2003: chroma (2003-2010) divides up to twenty chamber groups and soundsources throughout the performing space. The characteristics of thearchitectural space define the formal juxtaposition of the variouschamber music groups, whereby each solo or group is like a protagonistin a form of pure instrumental theatre. insideout, music for achoreographed installation, was her first work for the stage and wascreated in collaboration with Sasha Waltz in 2003.

Later works, such as Stirrings Still I and II, and most recentlymurmurs from 2009, are quiet and fragile collage compositions in whichSaunders continues to address her fascination with the separation ofthe musicians in the performing space.

Many of her compositions have been released on CD. She lives inBerlin.