Composer, Performer
Educator, Music Pedagogue
Biography
Sylvie Lacroix was born in Lyon. For many years she lived in Vienna as a freelance flautist, appearing above all as a soloist and chamber musician. Her artistic focus lies in New Music; in this context she has worked regularly with composers.
After years of experience as a performer, she began to work on her own compositions. Instrumental works from solo to ensemble, some with electronics, have emerged. In 2011 her Courante for solo harpsichord, from the suite Les Poétesses, received the Prix Annelie de Man in Amsterdam. In 2015 she toured with her programme „Flute_extended“, released as a CD on the ORF label. In 2022 a portrait concert followed at the Music Collection of the Austrian National Library.
Sylvie Lacroix is a founding member of „Klangforum Wien“ and was active in the ensemble until 1997. Her repertoire spans the newest solo flute literature, from Salvatore Sciarrino to K. K. Hübler, by way of Chaya Czernowin, Bernhard Lang and many composers of younger generations. As a soloist and chamber musician she has appeared at festivals such as Wien Modern, the Darmstadt Summer Course, Donaufestival, Tage für neue Musik Zürich, Bludenz Festival for Contemporary Music, Salt Music Victoria BC, Budapest Átlátszó Hang, Tzlil Meudcan Tel Aviv, Imago Dei Krems and Katarakt Hamburg.
From 2000 to 2022 she was a member of Trio AMOS – with Krassimir Sterev (accordion) and Michael Moser (cello) – and from 2008 to 2019 of the Viennese soloists' ensemble PHACE.
Alongside her engagement with New Music, Sylvie Lacroix has many years of experience in historically informed performance. As a traverso player she has been a member or guest of renowned period-instrument ensembles.
Between 1990 and 2006 she was particularly involved in educational projects. In the course of this work she founded, together with Elisabeth Monarth, Eva Landkammer and Christina Kraushofer-Neubauer, the summer course „Musikpalette“: chamber music for children and young people with a focus on New Music. From 1999 to 2019 she taught at Viennese music schools.
Experience live
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20.11
Concert series focusing on women composers and church musicians
Works by Hildegard von Bingen, Sylvie Lacroix and other women composers
Lutheran City Church (Lutherische Stadtkirche), 19:00 Dorotheergasse 18, 1010 Vienna Xenia Preisenberger, voice Helene Schütz, harp NN, keyboard
06.12
Two string quartets performed again in an evening by the Koehne Quartett
at the Alte Schmiede, 19:00 Schönlaterngasse 9, 1010 Vienna
24.10
for clarinet, saxophone, accordion, string trio
Performed by Ensemble Reconsil as part of the „Hautnah“ project
OFFTHEATER, 19:30 Kirchengasse, 1070 Vienna
27.09
for string quartet
Concert 19:30, Ursulakapelle Krems with the Koehne Quartett, plus improvisation by KNUSP feat. GUT&BÖSZ
13.09
dedicated to my friend Berndt Thurner
Amaama means „ahead“; it is based on a poem by Andrée Chédid, a French poet of Lebanese origin: Avec la mort devant – with death before us.
20:00 at the Echoraum Sechshauserstraße 66, 1150 Vienna the ensemble between feathers
Output
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2022
on a text by André Laude
Text by Semier Insayif, preface to Herzkranzverflechtungen
2021
dans le silence du confinement résonnent la quiétude et l’angoisse du monde / in the silence of the lockdown echo the peace and the anxieties of the world
2020
Asceticism means practice — this piece was written in that spirit
2019
based on the poem by John Donne: Death be not proud
for the opening of the Webern Trail in Mittersill
2018
reflections on Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8
a short commentary on Schumann’s Dichterliebe No. 7
for the animated film by Beatrix and Dietmar Hollenstein “la stanza”
2016
2 short pieces for young musicians
2015
texts by Andrée Chédid “Soleils transparents” and Paul Verlaine “Soleils couchants”
text by Lisa Ulrich (aged 8)
on Matisse’s cut-outs “Nus Bleus”
text by André Laude
text by André Laude
2014
Herta Kräftner, Hohes Lied
Herta Kräftner, Hohes Lied
2013
CD “to catch a running poet”, recorded by Maja Mijatovic
ovo cutters
„sunday driver and the princess carriage“
2012
Ensemble Reconsil 2018
Ensemble Reconsil 2018
2011
text by Daniil Kharms, with video accompaniment — video realisation: Martina Funder
cycle for children or young performers
2010
2008
2007
texts by Ernst Herbeck
Ensemble Quintonic
2006
in collaboration with Florian Bogner and Alexander Stankovski
2005
2003
2002
2001
2000
Projects
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1997
Epiphyt (1987/88) for solo flute and 22 instruments, 24'. Soloist Sylvie Lacroix · Klangforum Wien. Recording SRF Zürcher Tage für Neue Musik 1997.
„An epiphyte is a plant that grows on another. The botanical term can be read as a metaphor for the interlacing of soloist and ensemble.“ (Max Nyffeler)
2022
Part of the „Women Composers Portrait“ series of the Music Collection of the Austrian National Library: Gris sur bleu I (2013), …dans le silence… (2022), Nu bleu (2015), C´est un ordre d´amour (2022) with Kaoko Amano (soprano), Eric Lamb (flutes), Igor Gross (percussion), Johanna Lacroix-Handschuh (violin), framed by a conversation with Music Collection director Dr. Benedikt Lodes.
On 8 May 2022 the final concert of Trio Amos took place at MUWA Graz. The programme set music of the 15th century against works by Klaus Lang, with the composer himself playing the harmonium. Part of this programme can be heard on the CD „Teheran Dust“ and in the Ö1 Zeit-Ton broadcast of 24 July 2022.
2019
Premiere of „Illuminations“ by Tamara Friedl for choir, flute, cello and percussion, at the Imago Dei festival.
2018
The project „Rooms of Consciousness“ by Tanja Brüggemann and Sylvie Lacroix took place on 26 January at Brick-5. Through artistic spaces — music, visuals, architecture — the evening explored the rooms of our consciousness.
Visuals by Conny Zenk created virtual spaces as moving black-and-white plays of light projected onto translucent fabrics hung in the room and onto the performers. The musicians — Tanja Brüggemann (prepared piano), Sylvie Lacroix (flute), Karlheinz Essl (electronic sounds), Johann Leutgeb (voice) — brought their personal musical spaces to life and extended them through physical movement. Christina Bauer (sound direction) ensured a finely balanced distribution of the sonic events.
What emerged was a single body of art, developing and moving through subtle communication; strong, poetic moments of catharsis arose during the performance. The success of this experiment calls for a sequel.
2017
Stuart Saunders Smith (1948, USA) — „a liturgy of the hours“ (2012). Austrian premiere on 19 September 2018 at the Konzilsgedächtnis-Kirche in Vienna. One hour of music for solo flute.
„my life a mere breath… the first is breath… the last is breath… …in between we continue, breath, in our moments, in this, our moment… while darkness is my companion, I work the earth of the heart.“
Stuart Saunders Smith (born 1948 in Portland, Maine) is one of the leading composers of his generation and a pioneer of the confessional music movement — an intense compositional focus that reveals the most personal aspects of one's life, in the belief that the revelations of the particular speak to the universal.
2015
… a collection of works for flute and electronics, written for Sylvie Lacroix and created in close collaboration with the composers.
2014
Minoriten Graz, 25 May 2014, with Kaori Nishii (piano), Lukas Schiske (percussion), Sylvie Lacroix (flutes). Crippled Symmetry — a 90-minute piece for flutes, piano, celesta, glockenspiel and vibraphone.
In Feldman's music silence plays a prominent role, thanks to the hushed volume and the intervals between sounds. In Crippled Symmetry Feldman builds on repetitive motifs, knotting and weaving his sounds the way Anatolian nomads make their carpets; from those carpets he borrowed the concept of imperfect or 'crippled' symmetry. Listening to his work is a strange but overwhelming experience — an aural analogue to Mark Rothko's pulsating colour fields.
2004 / 2009
A collaborative composition project about nature, art and artificiality — with field recordings from Burgenland, flute sounds indoors and outdoors and their processing in the studio — with Alexander Stankovski, Sylvie Lacroix and Florian Bogner.
These projects examine natural and synthetic or manipulated sounds from various perspectives; the natural and the artificially created phenomenon are granted equal standing. In „Landschaft mit Flöte“ (Landscape with flute) real places contrast with artificially created spaces, when „photo-realistic“ material — a kind of acoustic survey of the environment penetrated by ambient noises — and solo flute playing are transformed through electroacoustic processing.
As different as the artificial world of virtuoso flute music and the sounds of the ocean might at first seem, they merge as breath and murmur in a zone between worlds: where borders become blurred, it is no longer possible to tell what is natural and what is artificial. (Text: Daniel Ender, translation: Friedericke Kuksar)
1998
Private recording by Sylvie Lacroix.
Recordings
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2022
chamber music (Klaus Lang) and transcriptions (Ockeghem, Pierre de la Rue)
2019
German Record Critics' Award 2019 · new music for the harpsichord · Maja Mijatovic plays Sylvie Lacroix’ „Courante“
2015
… a collection of works for flute and electronics, written for Sylvie Lacroix and created in close collaboration with the composers.
for harpsichord and accordion, from the suite „les poétesses“ — available in the Ovocutters collection.
2010
Schrift 1, 2, 3 for solo flute, solo cello, solo accordion and the Trio DW3
works for solo flute by Chaya Czernowin, Klaus Hübler, Ming Wang, plus Fruits 1 and 2 for flute and live electronics, a joint composition with Florian Bogner.
2008
for solo cello · performer: Maria Frodl
2007
a collaboration with electroacoustic artist Florian Bogner and composer Alexander Stankovski.
Contact
For concert enquiries, commissions and collaborations.
or write directly to lacroix_flute@yahoo.de