Sophie Lacaze

Composer Sophie Lacaze was born in Lourdes (France) in 1963. After obtaining an engineer’s degree, Sophie Lacaze turned to music. She studied at the Conservatoire de Toulouse (France), and continued at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where she received the Composition Prize. Afterwards, she studied with Franco Donatoni and Ennio Morricone at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena (Italy). She also engaged in music theatre with Georges Aperghis at the Centre Acanthes and attended Pierre Boulez's courses in College de France. In 2002, she was invited for a residency at the Electronic Music Unit of the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide (Australia).

In 2009, she is recipient of the Grand Prix Lyceen des for "les quatre elements", concerto for flute, children choir and percussion instruments, and in 2010 she received the Claude Arrieu Prize of the SACEM for her body of work. In 2012, she is laureate of Beaumarchais – SACD association.

Unsubdued but attentive to musical trends and schools, Sophie Lacaze has developed an original aesthetics that seeks to give back to music its first vocations, such as ritual, incantation, dance, and its links with nature, and in which the sound is essential.

Her compositions, which range from works for solo instruments to chamber and orchestral music, with also two operas and electroacoustic works, are regularly performed in numerous festivals and prestigious venues all over the world, by leading ensembles and orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, the Orchestre National d'Auvergne, I Solisti Veneti, the Romanian National Radio Orchestra, the French Flute Orchestra...

Her music has been the subject of a short documentary film « Portrait de Sophie Lacaze, compositeur » (co-production MEZZO TV / Fonds d'action SACEM, 2012), a podcast by La Lettre du Musicien (2020), several lectures (by Irina Koryakina, Tchaikovsky Music Conservatorium in Ekaterinburg, Russia, November 2010, by Patrick Quillier in his lecture series about « Music and Poetry in France in the 20th century » in Berlin, Germany and Nice, France, 2005 and 2006), and recently a book « Sophie Lacaze, portrait of a composer » by Geneviève Mathon, Editions Delatour, France, May 2021. 

Sophie Lacaze is regularly invited to give master-classes and lectures about her work (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Barossa Music Festival - Australia; CNSM in Paris, CNSM in Lyon, CRR in Versailles, CRR in Nancy, CRR in Rouen, CRR in Montpellier - France; Conservatoire Royal in Brussels, Conservatoire Royal in Liege, Conservatoire Royal in Mons - Belgium). She teaches composition and music history at the University of Montpellier. 

In 2003, she founded the French association of women composers, Plurielles 34.