Recipient of an Ivors British Composer Award nomination for her interdisciplinary album/audiobook/book Our Lady of Stars/Books of Hours, Sorana Santos’s work has been recognised for its “fresh originality and power” and the “flair and imagination inherent in her personality”.

Exploring points of intersection between music and language across concert and commercial music, Sorana moves between composing, songwriting, performing, and writing, weaving elements of contemporary, electronic, and improvised music with experiments in written and spoken word to create contemplative and spacious worlds that explore sound, syntax, and symbology. Her use of voice and keyboard instruments such as prepared piano, harpsichord, and harmonium is central to this, as is her creative writing, which from 2006 - 2015 was published by Lazy Gramophone Press. From 2023/24 her Nightwriter Series (Malpas, Vienne, Finisterre) saw Sorana introduce photography into her work, released under her own I Dream Sound imprint with distribution from The Orchard.

Published by Warner, Sorana’s media and commercial work is regularly broadcast internationally, and has received an industry award for innovation in sound design. Her composition portfolio also includes commissions from The BBC, Tate Modern, ORA Singers, The Rose Theatre Southbank, [former] Millennium Commission, Bath International Festival, work with The Ligeti Quartet, Juice Vocal Ensemble, leading improvisers James Maddren, Conor Chaplin, and Alex Bonney, and performances at The Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre, Oxford Contemporary Music, and Glasgow Jazz Festival. Academically, Sorana has received circa £100k in creative and academic grants, most recently completing ethnographic research in the US.

Having fostered many national and international names including Grammy and MOBO winners for two decades at The Guildhall’s Centre for Young Musicians with her courses in composition, songwriting, and production, Sorana was invited to lecture on her specialisms at Oxford University, where she taught from 2013-2020. She currently mentors for the AEC-ECSA Alliance (co-funded by the European Commission) and ORA Singers, and is a musical director for artists at Sony and Red Light Management.

Sorana grew up in London studying piano and ‘cello while attending Tiffin Girls’ School, performing on the local music scenes while recording as a pianist, vocalist, and arranger for local independent artists and labels. She holds BMus with academic commendation from the Guildhall School where she studied composition with Diana Burrell, later gaining her PhD at Royal Holloway under the supervision of Brian Lock and Nina Whiteman. Her free time finds her rollerskating and taking photographs of water on the canal.