ELAINA SOPHIE
Opus 1 composer
Elaina is one of six Opus 1 composers selected for 2025
Elaina is an emerging composer and clarinettist who has recently graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with a first class BMus (Hons) Composition degree. She often explores source-bonding and the contrast between the familiar and unfamiliar to play with an audience's perception and relationship to sound.
On May 9th, she produced, directed, and composed the music for a multidisciplinary show Seasons in the Richard Burton Theatre as part of Atmospheres Festival 2025. The work included a bespoke speaker layout of a French-8 plus a quad hanging above the stage alongside live musicians, dancers, stop motion animation, lighting, and set.
As a clarinettist, Elaina studies with Nicholas Carpenter and often performs her own compositions as well as other new music.
See more on her website.
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Getting to know Elaina
What’s the first thing you do when starting a new piece?
Every composition has its own unique process. The majority of the time, I start by researching music in the field that I’m looking to be working in both by listening to compositions and reading articles. I also find working with graphic notation helpful as a starting point. I will often sketch out the shape and textures of a passage before beginning to use formal notation. Sometimes elements of this graphic style will stick around to the final product and other times it’s more like a code that I decipher as I write.
Where do you find inspiration for your music?
I find inspiration by staying connected to the world around me. I’m always listening to new music, talking with my friends about music and life, and keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in nature and the planet. This keeps me thinking creatively and analytically about my own process so ideas will come to me just by going about my day. These ideas get put into my notes where sometimes they’ll get written immediately and other times they’ll sit there for a few years until the right moment comes along.
Was there a particular moment when you knew you wanted to be a composer?
As a teenager, I was a clarinettist in a new music ensemble where I learnt and performed my friends’ compositions. It was a lot of fun and I remember thinking “I wish I could write something for us to play” and I haven’t looked back!
What are you hoping to explore or challenge in your work during Opus 1?
My current research and compositions have been around acousmatic music and the practice of spectromorphology. I’m keen to explore how these processes could be applied to a trio of acoustic instruments challenging the audience's relationship to familiar and unfamiliar sound. I am very much looking forward to working with the Britten Sinfonia musicians and learning from them the intricacies and variety of their textures and timbres.
What 3 pieces of music would be on your desert island disc?
Tigran Hamasyan - Cave of Rebirth
Colin Riley - Throbbing Air from The Year Round album
Florence + The Machine - Dog Days Are Over
Tea or Coffee?
Tea
Early bird or night owl?
Night owl
Pencil or software?
Software