Sophie is a music historian combining a freelance career as a writer and speaker on classical music with formal positions in the arts and higher education.​

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She is a specialist in twentieth-century music and music for the stage and has taught and published widely on a range of topics, with a particular focus on North American music (especially Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland), ballet, opera, and musical theatre. 

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Over the past decade she has held lecturing positions at the University of Edinburgh, King's College London, University of Nottingham, University of Sheffield, and Liverpool Hope University. She has also supported research at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and was a distance learning tutor for mature students at the Open College of the Arts.  ​

 

Her first book Bernstein and Robbins: The Early Ballets, was published in 2021 as part of the Eastman Studies in Music series and named a 2022 CHOICE 'Outstanding Academic Title'. It was released in paperback in 2023. In recent years she has also contributed to The Cambridge History of Music Criticism, The Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia, and written on the relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland for Leonard Bernstein in Context. Current projects include publications related to American Ballet Theatre's 1946 London tour and the set designers Jo Mielziner and Oliver Smith. She is a Visiting Fellow at King's College London.

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A common thread across all her work is a commitment to engaging audiences and sharing knowledge and research. She writes programme notes for organisations including the BBC, Wigmore Hall, and Aldeburgh Festival and has given talks for organisations small and large across the country. She has been a guest expert for BBC Radio 3's Opera on 3 and Proms coverage, and for the Royal Opera House's Insights series.

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She is also an experienced arts manager and is currently Head of Music and Learning at Benslow Music with responsbility for programming and overseeing all aspects of the course and concert programme (totalling more than 150 music courses a year). She has previously held marketing and communications roles with Music in the Round and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and worked closely with the European Opera Centre.

 

As Curator for the European Opera Centre, she devised an adult opera education series, The Audland Talks, and trained animateurs for the Centre's learning programme based on Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen. She has also been involved in opera productions, including as Dramaturg for a project featuring the music of Ernst Toch and Hanns Eisler at the Nationaltheater Mannheim.

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