June 2023

After graduating in engineering, Sophie Lacaze turned to music. A graduate of the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, she went on to study composition at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena (Italy) with Franco Donatoni and Ennio Morricone, attended Pierre Boulez’s classes at the Collège de France and took up musical theatre with Georges Aperghis at the Centre Acanthes. In 2002, she was invited to take up a residency at the Electronic Music Unit at the University of Adelaide (Australia).

In 2023, her catalogue includes over 80 works, ranging from solo pieces to orchestral works, including two operas and mixed works, which are regularly performed in France and abroad.
Performers include the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (dir. Pierre-André Valade), the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire (dir. Aziz Shokhakimov), the Orchestre National d’Auvergne (dir. Baldur Brönnimann), the Orchestre de Perpignan Méditerranée (dir. Daniel Tosi), the BBC Symphony Orchestra (dir. Sakari Oramo), I Solisti Veneti (dir. Claudio Scimone), the Orchestra Națională Radio România (conductor Horia Andreescu), the Orchestra Filarmonica Mihail Jora di Bacau (conductor Ovidiu Balan), the Orchestre de Flûtes Français (conductor Pierre-Alain Biget), the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (conductor Bruno Mantovani), the Chœur Calliope (conductor Régine Théodoresco), the Mora Vocis ensemble, …

A winner of several international competitions, Sophie Lacaze has also been awarded the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs (2009) and the SACEM’s Claude Arrieu Prize (2010).

Sophie Lacaze does not belong to any particular school or musical movement, but has forged a personal and original aesthetic that seeks to restore to music its original vocations, such as ritual, incantation and dance, and its links with nature, and in which timbre plays a central role. It was during her first trip to Australia in 1996 that she discovered the culture of the Aborigines. Since then, it has been essential for her to return to the very essence of the art of music, to its fundamental purity.

A committed artist, she has been defending contemporary music for over 15 years, directing festivals such as Turbulences Sonores in Montpellier and Musiques Démesurées in Clermont-Ferrand, and giving lectures. She is also the founder of the French association of women composers Plurielles 34.

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In 2010, he was awarded 1st prize at the J.S. Bach competition at the Marseille Conservatoire; in 2013, he was a prizewinner at the Corbelin International Piano Competition; a semi-finalist at the Lyon International Piano Competition, he was selected the same year for the Virtuoses du Coeur competition in Paris.

He joined Boyan Vodenitcharov’s class at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel for his Bachelor’s degree, and also studied with Fernando Rossano at the Crr de st-Maur.

He studied in the Cycle d’Excellence at the CRR in Rueil-Malmaison and in Boulogne Billancourt in the class of Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt in Paris. He has also taken part in numerous masterclasses and received advice from Ilja Scheps, Cyril Huvé, Désiré N’Kaoua, Éric Tanguy, Philippe Hersant and Claire Désert.

In 2015, he took part in a series of concerts conducted by Vladimir Cosma.

In 2019, he had the honour of being invited to sit on the jury of the Concours International Music Festival Paris.

He has since performed in recital on numerous occasions, including the Chopin-Sand Festival at La Seyne-sur-Mer, the Fort Napoléon, the Castellet Festival, the 6th World Water Forum – Pigna (Corsica), the Palais Longchamp, the Mozart Amphitheatre in Avignon, the Abbaye Saint Victor, the Musée de la Marine in Toulon, the Palais du Pharo, for the Lions Club, the Sahak Mesrop Cultural Centre, the Maison de la Philosophie in Marseille…

A member of the contemporary music ensemble “Da Pacem”, he also practices improvisation, jazz and film music.

Since 2018, he has collaborated regularly with mandolinist Vincent Beer-Demander on concerts, premieres and recordings of works by Vladimir Cosma, Richard Galliano, Jean Claude Petit, Claude Bolling, Mike Marshall, etc.

Deeply attached to his Armenian roots, he performs regularly with Doudouk player Levon Khozian, with whom he will be recording “Mayrig” in 2019 alongside mandolinist Vincent Beer-Demander, an extract from Henri Verneuil’s film and music by Jean Claude Petit.

Passionate about teaching, he teaches piano at the Conservatoire National à Rayonnement Régional de Marseille.