The English critic Norman Lebrecht dubbed Brian Elias "the composer who writes one work a year." That's not literally true, but it points to the nature of his music: it combines careful craft with a certain expressive compulsion, with the feeling that Elias writes music when he has something he has to say. Indeed, Elias had a strong drive to write music even as a child. He was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, in 1948, and as a child he heard and was impressed by the music of the Indian streets. Elias lived in India until age 13, when he was enrolled in school in England and began to write down his until-then improvised music for student performances. He began studying at the Royal College of Music in 1966 but recalled to The Jewish Chronicle that "my teacher was usually drunk." He had more luck with private lessons from Elisabeth Lutyens, who was responsible for the Webern-esque sound of some of Elias' early music. He later broadened his style, but his orientation toward economical and rigorous harmonic structures remained. The orchestral work L'Eylah (1983) was a breakthrough for Elias; it had its premiere at the BBC Proms in 1984 and was popular with both audiences and critics. Elias' Five Songs to Poems by Irina Ratushinskaya, setting texts by a dissident Russian poet of the Soviet era, appeared in 1989 and was widely performed. One of Elias' most enduringly successful works was the ballet The Judas Tree, which has also been performed as an independent orchestral work; The Judas Tree was revived by England's Royal Ballet in its 2017-2018 season. The House That Jack Built (2001), premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, is another characteristic, large-scale Elias work, with its material carefully developed from that of a children's playground song. Elias has also composed music in smaller genres, including the solo clarinet piece Birds Practice Songs in Dreams (2004). Elias has won two British Composer Awards, for the orchestral work Doubles (2010) and the vocal Electra Mourns, based on texts by Sophocles. Several albums of music by Elias appeared on the NMC label in the mid-2010s; in 2017 the composer's cello concerto was premiered by Natalie Clein at the BBC Proms.