Born in Lourdes (France) in 1963, Sophie Lacaze studied music at the Conservatoire de Toulouse, and continued at the École 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. She is now developing a partnership with numerous ensembles and soloists, and also with primary schools to introduce children to contemporary music. Her compositions, which range from works for solo instrument to chamber and orchestral music, with also a chamber opera and works with tape, are regularly performed in leading music festivals in more than 20 countries. Sophie Lacaze teaches composition and orchestration. She is also managing director of the Centre de Pratique Musicale d'Annecy (France). Unsubdued but attentive to musical trends and schools, Sophie Lacaze has developed an original aesthetics that takes into account the current research on sound while looking to restore music its primary functions, ie ritual, incantation, dance, and its links with nature.
Maybe it only takes an encounter to discover a horizon of sounds, senses, rumours and poetry. Just like Bruno Maderna used to write for Severino Gazzelloni – flauto d'auro it was said to describe this miracle that the Italian composer and his favourite performer never ceased to bring back to life through their work – Sophie Lacaze dedicated herself to this instrument in a series of pieces written for the best part for Pierre-Yves Artaud, another remarkable artist. A flute therefore, in various poses and used in all its registers in a myriad of flutes, not only virtuoso, even if it lends itself to it, and in the most beautiful way, but also a flute in a form of starkness: at the birth of sound, of breath. No instrument can better describe – or even can come close to – this mimesis of an original state.
This CD is the collection of the majority of works for and with flute by Sophie Lacaze.