Sophie Lacaze

Composer Sophie Lacaze was born in Lourdes (France) in 1963. After her musical studies at the Conservatoire National de Region de Toulouse, she went on to further studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where she received the Composition Prize. Afterwards, she studied with Allain Gaussin, Antoine Tisné and Philippe Manoury in France, and with Franco Donatoni and Ennio Morricone at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena (Italy). She also engaged in music theatre with Georges Aperghis at 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).

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, such as Melbourne International Arts Festival and Australian Flute Festival (Australia), Musica Nova Festival (Brazil), Oriental Art Center, Shanghai (China), Hamamatsu International Wind Instrument Academy and Festival (Japan), Contemporary Music Festival Is Arti (Lituania), Laboratorium Muzyki Wspólczesnej International Festival and Ogrody Muzyczne in Warsaw (Poland), Barcelona Modern and ME_MMIX Festivals (Spain), Les Aubes Musicales de Genève, Schubertiade de Sion (Switzerland), International Festival of Modern Art - Two Days & Two Nights of New Music (2D2N) in Odessa (Ukraine), International New Music Week in Bucharest (Romania), American Flute Convention in New Orleans, Arts Now Series in Raleigh (USA), Festival de Radio France Occitanie Montpellier, Congrès et Festival International de Saxophone SaxOpen, Convention Internationale de la Flûte, 38e Rugissants, Aujourd’hui Musiques in Perpignan, Musicora, Rencontres Internationales ProQuartet de Fontainebleau and many other festivals in France. 

They are performed by major orchestras, such as the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, I Solisti Veneti, Orchestre de Flûtes Français, Romanian National Radio Orchestra; ensembles - Trio à cordes de Paris, Quatuor Arcadie, Hélios, Piano&Co, TM+, XASAX (France), Amarone string quartet (Germany), Canberra new music ensemble, Gryffin ensemble (Australia), Antara (Chile), Hinémoa (Belgique), Tétraflûtes (Switzerland), Zagrebacki Ansambl Flauta (Croatia), Kommandaria Sax Quartet (Cyprus); choirs and vocal ensembles – Calliope Choir, Mora Vocis ensemble; soloists - Pierre-Yves Artaud, Serge Bertocchi, Alain Carré, Natalie Dessay, Jean-Yves Fourmeau, Daniel Kientzy, Yumi Nara, Nadia Ratsimandresy, Fabrice Pierre, Chiharu Tachibana, Liesl Stoltz, Stephen Whittington and many others. 

Sophie Lacaze was awarded the Grand Prix Lyceen des Compositeurs (2009) 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 the association Beaumarchais - SACD. 

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), lectures (by Irina Koryakina, 

Tchaikovsky Music Conservatorium in Ekaterinburg, Russia, November 2010, and 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 d’une compositrice » by Geneviève Mathon, Editions Delatour, France, May 2018. 

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

She is artistic director of Turbulences Sonores contemporary music festival in Montpellier and Musiques Démesurées Festival in Clermont-Ferrand (France). 

She is also president of the French association of women composers, Plurielles 34.