"I am fascinated with technology, both modern and ancient, as an expression of our desires, fantasies and fears. In concerts I use sensors originally intended to foster a sense of security to create music. I record mechanisms from discarded tools and shape the sounds into abstract textures. I use raw digital data from documents and old software and transform them into sounds which reveal unspoken stories and sonic landscapes hidden in these digital highways which no one hears or sees. I consider myself a wired storyteller."

Laetitia Sonami is as much an instrumentalist, mime, dancer and performance artist as she is a composer. She builds instruments, writes computer software, records and sculpts sound elements and then, in haunting live performances, simultaneously controls her compositions and transcends technology through the use of gestural manipulators. Wielding her spiky black "Lady’s Glove," an ironically feminine elbow-length lycra mesh prosthesis embedded with sensors, she controls up to 16 musical parameters and translates custom-made mudras into sound. With text (written by Melody Sumner Carnahan), voice, and circular narrative a dominant element, Sonami’s work has been described as “an ongoing live performance novel.” Her most recent work, in collaboration with Nick Bertoni and The Tinkers Workshop, involves large scale installations made with inventors, scientists and school children.

  Born 1957, Paris, France
Lives in Oakland, California

1980 MFA, Mills College, Oakland, CA

 
  2002 "BAGS," an interactive musical/kinetic installation, in collaboration with Nick Bertoni and East Bay Youth
  2001 "Birds w/o feet (cannot land)," composition for a choreography by Molissa Fenley
  2000 "Conversation with a light bulb no.5," sound installation
"Conversation with a light bulb," composition/live performance for voice, data sounds and light. Text by Jocelyn Robert
"Two Trees,"composition for a choreography by Wendy Rogers
"Vanishing Tower,"composition for a video by Terri Hanlon
  1999 "Mechanical Songs between Light and Shadows," composition/live performance for voice, live electronics, motorized wash-basins, computer-controlled shadows and saxophone (J.Ingle)
  1998 "Why___dreams like a loose engine (autoportrait)," composition/live performance for voice, live electronics, and computer controlled servo-motors. Text by Melody Sumner Carnahan
"Shaky Memories," Sound installation for automated rubber gloves and music.
  1997 "Has/Had," for voice and live electronics controlled by the lady’s glove. Text by Melody Sumner Carnahan
“She Came Back, Again,” for live electronics controlled by the lady’s glove. Text by Melody Sumner Carnahan
  1995 “Wilfred wants You to Remember Us,” for live electronics controlled by the lady’s glove. Text by Melody Sumner Carnahan
  1994 “The Manananggal­Women Soignées,” a musical theatre work in collaboration with Marie Goyette and Melody Sumner Carnahan
  1992 “Story Road,” for synthesizers. Text by Melody Sumner Carnahan
  1991 “Mechanization takes command,” collaboration with Paul DeMarinis; for electronics, voice and slides
  1982-90 “Pie Jesu­Sounds from Empty Spaces,” “What Happened,” “Drole de Dimanche”, “While-U-Wait”

 
  2000 Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Award
  2000 Creative Work Fund Award for “BAGS,” a collaboration with N. Bertoni.
  2000 Harvestworks Residency
  1999 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship

 
  Solo CD (upcoming 2002), Lovely Music
Crachecophage, Avatar (collaboration with Jocelyn Robert)
The Time is Now, Frog Peak (compilation)
Story Road Jewel Box 26, Tellus (compilation)
What Happened, Nonesuch Records (compilation)
Pie Jesu­Sounds from Empty Places, Music & Arts Prog. of America (compilation)

 
  www.sonami.net