From jazz singing to music production: Sophie Edwards is the ultimate portfolio musician

In a hotel room in Amsterdam, on a writing trip, Sophie Edwards had an anxiety attack. She sat down and turned her phone and laptop into a makeshift studio, producing a rough demo on the spot.

“Being able to turn that negative experience into something I’m really proud of is really good for me,” she says now. That rough demo became I’ll Go When I’m Ready – one of the songs Edwards is most proud of.

Edwards studied at the ANU School of Music and still works there today. In between, she has built a career as a singer, songwriter, producer and recording technician – the kind of career that doesn’t sit still long enough to be summed up by one job title.

Jazz beginnings

That path began at 15, when Edwards would leave school one afternoon a week to study music with a small group of talented Year 11 and 12 students. It was meant to be an elective, a way to fill a gap in her timetable.

“I wouldn’t have even done music if I didn’t start at the CMC when I was 15,” she says, of what was then called the H Course and is now known as the Community Music Centre.

“It was always just an after-school activity, until suddenly it was something that could be a career path for me.”

A Bachelor of Music followed, with a major in music performance focused on jazz and contemporary singing.

“I thought that I was going to be a jazz singer, so I just focused on that,” she says.

The turn came almost by accident. Production classes, taken as electives to round out her timetable, opened up a different way of thinking about music – one that connected performance, songwriting, recording and production.

“I did jazz, and that led me to improvise and song write, which led me to produce music,” she says.

Building a sound of her own

After graduating in 2019, Edwards spent several years developing her own music, then completed a Master of Creative Media and Technology at Berklee NYC, specialising in songwriting and production. 

New releases have kept coming ever since, most recently the single Urban Legend, out in July 2026. It was premiered on Hit 104.7 Canberra and has had radio play across Triple J and Triple J Unearthed. 

She produces for other artists too. On Lara Buchanan’s song Gold, she recorded and produced every instrumental part behind Buchanan’s piano and vocals.

“It’s almost like I do the whole band behind the track,” she says. Gold passed one million Spotify streams within a month of release and has since reached around two million.

Edwards was nominated for ACT Young Australian of the Year in 2024 and, more recently, for Breakthrough Producer of the Year in 2026 by the Music Producer and Engineers’ Guild of Australia. During her studies, she received the Christel Larko Music Scholarship and the Marjorie M. Kingston Prize for Creative Leadership in Music.

Back on the other side

When a position opened at the School of Music, returning felt like a natural fit. Edwards turns her recording acumen to the many performances happening across the School, making sure they run smoothly and that the sound is on point.

Among the staff she now works alongside is Matthew Barnes, who taught her recording classes when she was still a student.

“It was really cool to work alongside the people who were teaching me before,” Edwards says. “I get more of an understanding of their own processes when they’re not teaching a class.”

Edwards also teaches through the CMC, running Girls Jazz and Song to Studio, and is regularly asked to guest lecture.

On quieter days, you might find her preparing rooms for rehearsals, assists in classes, and works in the recording studio, producing music, audiobooks and podcasts for clients across the University and beyond. 

That range extends into her work with students directly.

Earlier this year, she assisted with the advanced recording and production techniques class. It left the school with a cohort of seven or eight students who are, in her words, hooked.

“They all have a group chat where they help each other on different recording sessions, and they’re going out into the community finding bands and bringing them in to record,” she says.

“They’re developing their own professional portfolios without even realising it, just from this one course.”

When asked how her own path compares to today’s Music Practice major, she says:

“I think I would have done the equivalent of the Music Practice major. What I’m doing now for work is more like Contemporary Music Production.”

The sustainable musician

For Edwards, that range isn’t a side effect of an unusual career – it’s the model.

“I think it’s a really useful skill for a lot of performers to be able to record themselves,” she says. “If you had the skill set to be able to record somebody else, that’s a stream of income in the future.”

It’s also what’s kept the work interesting, she says. “Being competent at a lot of different things has meant that my work is never boring. I’m called upon in lots of different situations.”

“They call it a portfolio musician – you can just do lots of different things,” she says. “I think that’s a super sustainable way to be a musician, because if you just focus solely on one thing, and that work dries up, there’s nothing else to fall back on.”

Edwards is preparing to leave ANU at the end of July to focus on freelancing and her own music in Melbourne.

She’ll have some familiar faces there too. Much of her ANU cohort is already in Melbourne, including producer Louis Montgomery and fellow artist Sam Sly – part of a growing scene of ANU-trained producers and engineers now working out of the city.

“I will miss the community and being able to work with students every day,” she says.

“I think the recording studio is such an amazing space – I’m definitely going to miss being able to work in there.”

Her advice to students just starting out is the same lesson her own path has taught her.

“Be really open-minded about all of the different parts of music that you could learn,” she says.

“I thought that I just wanted to do jazz singing, and my whole life is completely different now – which is good.”

“I hope that I can sustain being a music producer or musician for as long as I can.”