Sophie Lacaze
Sophie Lacaze (born 9 September 1963) is a French composer. Life. Lacaze was born in Lourdes. She studied music at the Conservatoire de Toulouse, and continued at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where she received the Composition Prize. Afterwards, she studied with Allain Gaussin, Philippe Manoury and Antoine Tisné in France, and with Franco Donatoni and Ennio Morricone in Italy. She also engaged in music theatre with Georges Aperghis at the Centre Acanthes, and attended Pierre Boulez's courses in Collège 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). After having travelled in several countries, especially in Australia and Belgium, she came back in France in 2006. In 2009, she is recipient of the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs (France) for "les quatre elements", concerto for flute, children choir and percussion instruments. In 2010, the SACEM gives her the Claude Arrieu Prize for her body of work. In 2012, she is laureate of Beaumarchais-SACD association. Her compositions, which range from works for solo instruments to chamber and orchestral music, with also two operas and works with tape, are  regularly performed in more than 20 countries 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 National Radio Orchestra of Romania and the French Flute Orchestra. Unsubdued but attentive to musical trends and schools, 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. She teaches composition and history of music at Montpellier University  and is Artistic Director of the Festival Musiques Démesurées in Clermont-Ferrand. In 2003, she founded the French association of women composers, Plurielles 34.