Kate St. John

Kate is a very talented composer, arranger, producer and instrumentalist (oboe, cor anglais, accordion, saxophone and piano). She was a member of The Ravishing Beauties, The Dream Academy and Channel Light Vessel, but also recorded two solo albums: Indescribable Night and Second Sight.

Kate has played with many singers and bands including Julian Cope, Marianne Faithfull, The Waterboys, Philip Glass, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, the Carthy/Waterson family, the Thompson family and the MacColl/Seeger family, whom she married into. In the nineties, Kate toured with Van Morrison and played on 5 of his albums and was a member of Tom Wait's Magic Bullets Band for his and Robert Wilson's Black Rider shows.

Since 2005, she's been the Musical Director for multi-artist shows at The Barbican and The Festival Hall in London and venues around the world such as the Way To Blue tributes to Nick Drake, Hal Wilner's Rogues Gallery and Nino Rota concerts, Daughters Of Albion, Evening Of Political Song at Richard Thompson's Meltdown, Bright Phoebus Revisited, Blood and Roses: Tribute to Ewan MacColl and the Imagining Ireland/Imagining Home concerts for the Centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising,. 

It doesn't stop there! Kate has written string and woodwind arrangements for various records and concerts, including for Laura Marling.

Kate and her writing partner and husband, Neill MacColl, specialise in music production for films, having worked on Far From The Madding Crowd (2015), Tulip Fever and My Cousin Rachel (2017).