Laetitia Sonami was born in France and settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in the emerging field of electronic music. Her work combines text, music and "found sound" from the world, in compositions which have been descibed as "performance novels". She is creating and utilizing some of the most sophisticated technologies in order to create an intimate, spontaneous art form which transcends technology.

Since 1991 she has developed and adapted new gestural controllers to musical performance and composed works with these materials. Her unique instrument, the lady's glove , is made out of black lycra and is embedded with sensors which track the slightest motion of each finger, the hand and the arm. The performance thus becomes a small dance where the movements shape the music. (Other instruments which have been investigated are a "smart" old bellow, and a disabled truck antenna...)

She is currently performing "The Appearance of Silence (the invention of perspective)", a work-in-progress with live video by Sue Costabile, "Why ___ dreams like a loose engine (autoportrait)" , a farewell to the mechanical age in which the lady's glove controls hobby motors, mechanisms, shadows and lights, with a text by Melody Sumner Carnahan, "Conversation with a Light bulb" with the lady's glove controlling sounds and pulsating light bulbs' filaments.

Her installations include sonic and kinetic elements which often respond to the viewer's actions. BAGS, in collaboration with Nick Bertoni, the Tinkers Workshop and East Bay Youth was presented in the fall 2002. The installation consists of a variety of animated kinetic bags which are activated by the public and control the soundscore. Other installations include various animated ubiquitous objects (rubber gloves and light bulbs for the most part...) while Wire Rap II and Wire Rap III, installed this past year , show a clear obsession with wires and walls.

She has been performing in numerous festivals across the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan, among which the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, the Bourges Music Festival in France, the Sonambiente Festival in Berlin, the Interlink festival in Japan, Bang-on-a Can, The Kitchen and Other Minds, S.F.

Four of her compositions are included on CD compilations: "Imaginary Landscapes" (Nonesuch), "Another Coast " (Music and Arts Program of America), "Jewel Box " (TellUs 26, NYC), "The Time is Now" (Frog Peak Music). Lovely Music Ltd. is scheduling a release of her solo CD this fall (... I do not mention the year any longer.)

Recent awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts (2002), Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Award (2000), the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2000), Studio Pass-Harvestworks residency (2001) and a Creative Work Fund award (2000) for a collaboration with Nick Bertoni and the Tinkers Workshop.

She lives in Oakland, California and is currently guest lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Milton Avery Summer program at Bard college.

Press Excerpts :

"...Experimental music is rarely this visceral and engaging" Los Angeles Times

"She sometimes looked like a human antenna searching the air for sounds, or like a dancer focused on her hands, or like a deity summoning earth-shaking rumbles with a brusque gesture. Her pieces are sparse but allusive, conjuring half-remembered dreams; they shimmer into earshot, glide and gradually evaporate..." - New York Times

"Sonami is sultry and magical.. a striking talent. ...Her combination of French accent, California technology, and Tibetan perspective is darkly American. ...expect something inexplicable, compelling and deeply personal." -Village Voice

"With steely concentration Ms. Sonami seems to conduct the very air, extracting from it rich, ethereal soudscapes that feels more discovered than composed. Combining musical tones, sampled instruments, rumblings, twitters, hisses, voices, and even animal noises, Sonami molds sound the way a master sculptor shapes clay, building expressive monuments in fleeting temporality. Her complicated, at time humorous, always haunting compositions seem to tower above her even as she holds them in her two small hands." - Chicago Reader