Elsa Filipe was born in 1962 in Lisbon. She started her musical studies privately and later completed the general course in organ. She later enrolled in Lisbon’s “Amadores de Música” Academy and completed the Musical Formation General Course after having received her first training in composition.

She carried on her higher studies and in 2000 concluded the Composition Course at Lisbon’s Higher School of Music, where she worked with, among others, Christopher Bochmann, António de Sousa Dias and António Pinho Vargas.

She is presently preparing her dissertation on 20th Century Music and Musicology in Paris IV University (Sorbonne) under the orientation of Marc Battier. The central issue of her dissertation is the real time interaction between the interpreter and the “machine” and the implications of this in the process of composition and interpretation.

She lectured in “Composition Analysis and Techniques”, “Music History” and “Acoustics” at the Choral Phydellius Music School in Torres Novas and at the Children’s Friends Music Foundation in Lisbon.

Between 1998 and 2001 she took part in the directing board of the “Amadores de Música” Academy.