Elena used the lecture (which was the first in this year’s Alfred Hook Lecture Series at the Con) to share with us the various ways in which she uses events, objects and ideas to inspire her compositions. These inspirational sources vary greatly – perhaps best demonstrated in Elena’s newest piece Setting Out, which was premiered (also at the Con) on Sunday afternoon. The concerto for bassoon contains movements inspired by Elena’s experience catching public transport, and one based on the surname of artist Martin Sharp.

I was most interested, and moved, to hear Elena explain the way she has used Schizophrenia as inspiration for her work. Elena’s son suffers from the disease and much of her work has been aimed at providing Alex with some respite from the internal voices with which he must constantly struggle. In order to do this, she transformed her musical style from that point on – abandoning avant-garde complexity in favour of harmonic simplicity (see Eliza Aria, below).

While Elena didn’t spend a great deal of time discussing this very personal source of inspiration on Friday, some independent research led me to this interview from a few...