Elena Rykova

Elena Rykova is a composer and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores sound as a spatial and temporal phenomenon. Combining traditional instruments with found objects, movement, and performative situations, she creates pieces that unfold as intricate sound worlds rather than linear narratives. Her scores often employ nontraditional notation and exist equally as visual and performative artifacts.

She has written solo, chamber, and ensemble works, electroacoustic works, music theatre pieces, and musical performances for major new music groups around the world, as well as music for film and visual media.

She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where she also taught composition and electroacoustic music as a Teaching Fellow.

Elena is currently based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She serves on the programming committee of Société de Musique Contemporaine (SMC) and as a board member of Swiss Music Edition (SME). From 2024 to 2026, she was Artistic Director of the Basel-based ensemble Lemniscate.

She is currently Associate Professor of Composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. In Spring 2026, she was Guest Professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona.

In each of my pieces, there is more than just music.

An encrypted sense.

A coded fragment of a greater meaning that I desperately search for while creating the piece.

That’s why every piece I write contains a part of me searching —

and a part of me that has found a small shard of that greater meaning.

A shard, a glimpse that gives me the strength to move forward,

that reveals something within me and gives me weight, gravity.

But it’s never permanent.

You can’t keep convincing yourself with the same discovery —

you have to uncover something new each time,

add to the weight, to the meaning,

expand it.

I believe this process is endless.

And perhaps the whole meaning —

we, or I, will never fully grasp.

But within those moments of understanding,

there is so much power, beauty, joy, inspiration, and wholeness —

that every time it happens,

I know with absolute clarity:

these moments are worth living for.

Worth living and creating,

worth continuing the path.

This understanding is deeply personal —

and that’s what makes it so precious, so beautiful.

It’s not something you shout in the city square.

Sometimes, it’s not even something you can put into words.

- Elena Rykova, a page from a diary (January 6, 2020)