Folie a Deux

Award-winning British composer Emily Hall presents Folie a Deux, a work that uses finely crafted songs to tell a modern folk-tale. Folie a Deux is a lyrical and intense investigation into love and loneliness within a relationship. Insanity, electricity, and love collide in a sonic voyage into the psychiatric syndrome known as folie a deux or shared psychosis, in which a delusion is transmitted from one person to another. The piece is composed for two singers, an acoustic harp, and an electro-magnetic harp. This electro-magnetic harp, commissioned and built for this piece, uses vibrating magnets to evoke an underlying electronic presence representing the pylon - the third character that presides over this story. Against a backdrop of responsive light and sound, the result is a hauntingly beautiful soundscape. Much of Hall's music is formed from close creative relationships with singers and writers. Here she has teamed up with hailed Icelandic lyricist, writer, and longtime Bjork collaborator Sjon. Folie a Deux features beats from Mira Calix and was co-produced and mixed by composer and producer Valgeir Siguresson (Bjork, Feist, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy...). Emily Hall studied composition at York University and the Royal College of Music, London. She has written for many different ensembles and orchestras including the London Sinfonietta, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Brodsky Quartet, Opera North, and the Hungarian Radio Chorus. Her music has been performed in diverse venues ranging from Latitude Festival to the Cite de la Musique, and broadcast on BBC Radio 2, 3, 4, and 6. Her first opera, Sante, produced by Aldeburgh Music, was described by The Times as a dynamic new opera worth everyone's time and hopes. Hall received the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2005, the Genesis Opera Prize in 2006, and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2013.