Elena Kats-Chernin cried when she first saw Adam Elliot’s animated clay feature Mary and Max, which featured a piece of her music. As she tells Steve Dow, it was a dream come true when Elliot asked her to compose the entire score for his new claymation movie Memoir of a Snail.

A lounge room set scaattered with odd objects for the claymation film Memoir of a Snail.
Adam Elliot and the set for Grace Pudel’s lounge room from Memoir of a Snail. Photo © Arenamedia

Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin was so proud. Here she was in a Sydney cinema, watching the local premiere of Mary and Max, an Australian stop-motion animated feature film about two unlikely pen pals. One of her famous piano pieces, Russian...