Eugenia Cheng (she/her)

Get To Know Composer Eugenia Cheng

1. What has been your favorite part of working on the Amplify Series thus far?

The community! It has been wonderful to meet the amazing and lovely organisers, composers, and singers, and to feel part of such a generous and actively inclusive community. Most of all it has been extraordinary to get to know the poet whose work I am setting, Sofia Ghassaei. In our correspondence I have found that she is a multi-faceted multi-dimensional creative artist. Also, of course, I have loved doing the composing. Sofia's poems instantly sounded like music to me and it's been an honor to bring that music into being.

2. How did you discover your passion for composition and what do you love most about it?

All children make up songs when they're little don't they? The question is just how much that urge is nurtured. I was lucky to have my musical urges nurtured as I had music lessons from the age of three. My main focus was on playing music rather than writing it, but I always composed as well, and was lucky to have friends who were happy to perform my music with me. It was only quite recently that I started composing more seriously, first as a catharsis for my own grief, and then feeling I could use my musical voice to help others too.

3. How would you describe the process of composing a piece of music?

I am also a mathematician and I do think composing has a lot in common with my math research. It starts with a desire to express something, and with fleeting glimpses of ideas. It proceeds by homing in on those glimpses, shaping them, fitting them together, developing them, and then polishing them. I also spend a lot of time at the piano messing around with chords and going "ooh I like that one", and hearing things in my head that I then have to find as notes on a keyboard. I know when I want to set a poem because I read it and hear music in my head immediately, even if it's not very specific. This definitely happened to me with Sofia's poems.