The Importance of Craft

Sophia Bass ’20 can pinpoint the exact moment she decided to become a film composer. At 13 years old, mid-rewatch of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, she suddenly heard the soundtrack by Howard Shore in a new light.

“It awakened the love of film music in me,” she says. “I said, ‘I absolutely have to do that. And I have to figure out how I'm going to do that.’ From there, the love never died.”

Years later, Bass has kept that promise to her teenage self. A musical studies major during her time at Oberlin, she used those academic foundations to launch her into a Fulbright-Nehru research grant, a master’s degree from the Royal College of Music, and a thriving freelance career.

After two years in the U.K. and one year in India for the Fulbright, Bass is currently based in Chicago. “It’s nice to stay in one place for a little while,” she says. 

Much of her current work involves collaborations with international film directors, but some projects are closer to home. Next year, one of her pieces will be performed by the Michigan Philharmonic and its artistic director Nan Washburn; Bass first worked with Washburn as an Oberlin student. 

“We've stayed in touch ever since,” she says. “That's the beauty of Oberlin — the idea that you can form relationships and that those relationships carry on after graduation.” 

Shore’s scores are just one of many influences that have shaped Bass. Growing up, she and her siblings were “taught to see boredom as an opportunity for imagination to grow.” 

In fact, her entire family nurtured creative paths, and recently combined their skills to create a film called Advent, which won Best Short Narrative at the 2025 Pan African Film & Arts Festival. (Advent also has an additional Oberlin connection: Now-retired director of Oberlin Opera Theater Jonathon Field and Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand were song collaborators on the film.)

A self-taught pianist, Bass learned music by ear and entered Oberlin with an open mind and an interest in the musical studies major. The flexibility of the major allowed her to explore all of her interests: research, ethnomusicology, performance, and composition.

Bass focused her ethnomusicological interests on the Indian, East Asian, and Afro-Asiatic region. Her advisor, Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology Jennifer Fraser, guided her to courses that aligned with these interests.

Among the classes she took: Introduction to African-American Music; Internalizing Rhythms, taught by former Professor of Advanced Improvisation and Percussion Jamey Haddad; and Fraser’s own Analysis of World Music.

“Fraser was very supportive, trying to help me find those niche classes so that I could forge a bespoke path for myself,” Bass says.

She also studied conducting with Tiffany Chang ’09 and Director of Oberlin Orchestras Raphael Jiménez, which fulfilled an important component in her artistic life. 

“I see composition and conducting as two parts of the same whole,” Bass says. While writing the music is a solitary process, having musicians perform it gives it a kind of new life. “So while I am a composer, I also feel the need to conduct, to feel whole in my craft.”

As a third-year, she brought together a 45-piece student orchestra to record her score for a short film called Thicker Than Water. While that process was intense, she says she felt constant support from those around her. “Oberlin is unique in that it was a place where I had the courage to feel the fear and do the scary thing anyway.”

Post-graduation, Bass says that “when I think about where my career is now, it can all be traced back to Oberlin.” That includes her Fulbright-Nehru research grant. In Karnataka, India, she studied with world-class tabla player Udayraj Karpur, who she met in Fraser’s Analysis of World Music class. Bass was also part of the Los Angeles Film Conducting Intensive in 2023 and 2025.

And, in a full-circle moment, Bass wrote her master’s thesis in composition for screen at the Royal College of Music, based on an interview with Howard Shore.

“My biggest takeaway was the importance of craft — understanding why you make the decisions you make,” she says. “The reason I love music and film is because of the marriage of music and image. For me, nothing can transcend that as a storyteller.”

Check out our Conservatory Areas of Study and learn about different ways to explore music at Oberlin.