Sonic Grace

Sophie Dupuis
Music for Lamps by Adam Basanta, Julian Stein, and Max Stein

13.05.21

Composer Sophie Dupuis

Concert experiences have always made a strong impression on me. It’s probably why I’m so drawn to multidisciplinary works and why I seek to incorporate multidisciplinary elements in my own music when I can. A performance that is forever engraved in my memory was the Toronto première of Music for Lamps in 2015. This work by Adam Basanta, Julian Stein, and Max Stein is an installation and performance for twelve lamps, each set up with its own speaker and controlled independently.

Over the course of the work, the lamps would flicker, light up and turn off, matching the intensity of the sounds emanating from them. The overall effect evoked in me what I interpret to be a sort of primal response. I was front row to delicate fireflies dancing and lightnings exploding at my feet. How magical and frightening! It made me aware of one of the possibilities that using visuals in sound art presents: the power to intensify a message by tapping directly into something that is innate to us.

- Sophie Dupuis

Watch and listen to Music for Lamps by Adam Basanta, Julian Stein, and Max Stein

Sophie Dupuis Bio

Sophie Dupuis is a composer from New Brunswick interested in interdisciplinary art music, electroacoustics and music for soloists, small and large ensembles. She finds her inspiration in the picturesque scenery of the Maritimes where she grew up, in her attraction to raw electrical sounds and in her emotional response to art involving body and voice. Her works have been commissioned and performed by soloists and groups such as Duo Holz, The Arts Song Project, Made in Trio, Din of Shadows, Caution Tape Sound Collective, Thin Edge New Music Collective, and ECM+ for their Generation2018 tour.

Sophie received a Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music from the University of Toronto and several prizes for her studies in music, including the University Medal in Music from Dalhousie University, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the John Weinzweig Graduate Scholarship and the Theodoros Mirkopoulos Fellowship in Composition two years in a row. She was nominated by composer James Rolfe to receive the 2019 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize Protégé award. Sophie recently completed her graduate degree and is now working on developing her skills with live and fixed electroacoustics. Aside from her activities as a composer, she works as a violinist, arranger and passionate music teacher of violin, piano and theory in Ottawa. She was Vice-President of the Canadian League of Composers since 2019 before becoming President of the organization in 2020.

Sophie holds a Bachelor of Music in composition from Dalhousie University, and a Masters of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition from the University of Toronto.