The Rain Keeps Coming: Amelia Clarkson, the youngest female composer ever commissioned by the Ulster Orchestra, on her new work for them which premiered last month

Amelia Clarkson

The Rain Keeps Coming by Northern Irish composer Amelia Clarkson was premiered by the Ulster Orchestra at the Ulster Hall in Belfast on 10 October 2025. The work explores cycles of personal renewal and reflection. Amelia is the youngest female composer ever commissioned by the Ulster Orchestra. 

Born in County Down, her music blends folk influences with contemporary timbres, exploring modern issues through the lens of nature, mythology and literature and has been described as having "inherent elusiveness… beautifully captured" (Het Parool). Her 2024 work, I float between, was premiered National Symphony Orchestra Ireland, conductor Gavin Maloney, at the National Concert Hall in Dublin in January 2025. The work was broadcast live by RTÉ Lyric FM, and this recording can be heard on Amelia's SoundCloud.

Amelia Clarkson · I float between (2024) National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland

Chatting to Amelia after the premiere, she comments that the performance went well, though with a relatively short rehearsal period, the time went very fast, and she did feel pressure. She first met the orchestra in 2023 and never expected to be working with them at such a young age. She has known she was writing a piece for them for two years. And whilst the prospect of writing for the orchestra had its scary aspects, the reality of working with them was lovely, both the musicians and the people behind the scenes. Amelia benefited from the orchestra workshopping the piece in May 2024, something that does not always happen. This gave the musicians and the composer the chance to get to grips with each other.

For Amelia, The Rain Keeps Coming is about the tides of life, resilience, and the sense of a relentless cycle. How only in the hardest points of life do we feel fully present. Amelia worked a lot with dancers and dance companies; even in her concert works, she feels that there is still a sense of dance in her music. She is currently studying for a PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music. She was awarded the 2022 Mendelssohn Scholarship supporting her current PhD studies at the Royal Northern College of Music.

She always imagines her music as related to a dance event, even if it isn't strictly. She feels that this alters your perspective on the work's structure. And she is always moving when composing, her music consisting of melodies and lines. And she admits that the advantage of imagining the dance is that she can change it in her head, as it is not real. This leads us into a fascinating discussion of Tchaikovsky's music: the symphonic nature of his dance music and how dance seems to find its way into his symphonic music.

Amelia Clarkson

Dance has been in her life for a long time; as a young girl, she danced before she took up music as a hobby. She only started composing in her late teens, as she did not realise that being a composer was a thing. Now, working with music and dance feels like coming home, combining her hobbies. In fact, singing was her first instrument, but she admits that she has left that behind, commenting that dance is the polar opposite.

After taking a music degree at Cardiff University, she did a master's at Trinity Laban, where music and dance are studied side by side, so that things crystallised for her. She did various collaborations in Northern Ireland, mostly relatively small pieces of work. Her first big opportunity was working with Dutch National Ballet, when in 2023, her work Ephemeral with choreographer Wubkje Kuindersma was commissioned by the Dutch National Ballet and Dutch National Ballet Orchestra for the Junior Company's 10th Anniversary, and toured the Netherlands to fifteen venues during 2024.

Her PhD began as a study of music for dance, challenging audience perceptions of sexual violence. But she admits that most PhDs change as they progress, and now all the pieces that are part of her thesis are commissions from the past three years, including three big dance works as well as orchestral works. As she worked on her thesis, she realised that she was more interested in the process than the violence. The subject of the PhD has now swivelled to how she writes for dance and whilst she admires the Amelia Clarkson of 2021, it is not her any more.

When I ask about being Northern Irish and how this influences her music, she comments that there is, in fact, only a small piece of water between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. In her music, there is a slight folk influence, and she borrows from modes, but she feels the influence is more cultural. She did not really know that you could compose till she left Northern Ireland. It is, she feels, a very different place from the rest of the UK. Access to new work in all art forms, not just music, was difficult when she was growing up in the Province. It is this cultural difference that, she feels, creates a different mindset, so Northern Ireland is present in her work more through upbringing than sound.

She studied music at university because 'it was the only thing I was good at'. She chose Cardiff, in fact, the music course which is threatened with closure by the university. She only submitted her UCAS application on the deadline; she had no specific idea of the future and did not know conservatories were an option. In fact, Amelia's choice was influenced by the fact that the head of music at her school went there, and she felt that a music degree would be a good base.

She is currently on the RPS Composers Programme is writing a new work for the Hebrides Ensemble. She is also planning her first opera, which will be based on the life of Oscar Wilde. She is working with the writer Michael J Daly and director Conan McIver, and the piece is currently in what she describes as the 'experimental research phase'.

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