La Boîte à Pépites, a new classical music label dedicated to female composers, will be launched in October
La Boîte à Pépites is a new classic record company dedicated to the distribution of music by female composers. Founded by cellist Héloïse Luzzati, the label has ambitious plans to discover and record works by female composers rarely, if ever, heard before or lost over the decades. The label launched in North America on October 21, 2022 with a 3CD set complete works by French composer Charlotte Sohy, followed in 2023 by a collection of works by Rita Strohl (1865-1941) with many more in preparation including British composers Liza Lehmann, Alice Mary Smith and Adela Maddison.
Several world-class musicians have agreed to contribute to future recordings, including Bertrand Chamayou, Karine Deshayes, Elsa Dreisig, Marie-Josèphe Jude, Emmanuel Strosser, Delphine Haidan, Xavier Phillips, Stéphanie-Marie Degand, Célia Oneto Bensaid, Fiona MacGown, the Modigliani quartet, Trio Wanderer and many others.
The label is part of the project “Elles – Femmes Compositrices” – imagined by Héloïse Luzzati – which began with the creation of the music festival “Un Temps pour Elles” in France and soon followed by the YouTube channel “The Nugget Box” which now contains more than 60 videos, from animated documentaries to video advent calendars, a wealth of short videos intended to make people discover, while having fun, the work and the lives of women who have remained in the shadows .
Release of the first album
“Charlotte Sohy – Compositrice de la Belle Epoque” is the first collection to be published on the new label on October 21, 2022. Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955) composed around 35 works and her pieces for Piano, Chamber and Orchestra are distributed here at through 3CD. With the exception of the Rustic Triptych, this is the first time these pieces have been recorded.
The decision to dedicate the very first album to Charlotte Sohy was born out of meetings between founder and artistic director Héloïse Luzzati with conductor Debora Waldman and Charlotte Sohy’s grandson, François-Henri Labey. Through immense amounts of hard work and dedication, Labey was able to preserve and digitize all of his grandmother’s compositions, providing the sheet music without which this CD set would not have been possible.
“Charlotte Sohy – Compositrice de la Belle Epoque” is available in a 3CD box set with beautifully illustrated liner notes, as well as via online streaming and download platforms.
Héloïse Luzzati, Founder & Artistic Director declares: “A few years ago, the question of the place of women in the history of music began to take on a certain importance in my life as a musician. How could I have gone so many years without ever having played a piece composed by a woman? This is why I created the association ‘Elles – Femmes Compositrices’, whose mission is to bring new life to unknown or at best little-known women’s works. Long hours spent reading manuscripts or first editions have allowed us to unearth pieces that seemed worthy of a good place in the standard musical repertoire. In this fertile ground, our desire, even our conviction of the absolute need to share these works has continued to grow.
The new record company La Boîte à Pépites continues and expands this mission by adding a new objective: the release of a series of concept albums, each devoted to a single composer. She and her work are the focus of every album, and tracks are performed by multiple musicians in service of her music. By having the tracks recorded by a plethora of different artists, my hope is to shift the focus of the CDs from the players to the composer, and to help his works gradually take their place in classical music history. . music.”
Charlotte Sohy Biography
Born in France in 1887, Charlotte Sohy was encouraged in her artistic studies by her father. A pupil of the greatest musicians of her time, such as Louis Vierne or Vincent d’Indy, she was the friend of many brilliant female musicians such as Nadia Boulanger, in her childhood, and later Mel Bonis. In 1909, she married Marcel Labey, another composer, with whom she had seven children; her wealthy family allowed her to fulfill her calling as a composer alongside her duties as a mother. She sometimes signs her compositions with the name of her grandfather, Charles Sohy, writing lyrical dramas, chamber music and symphonic music: almost none of her thirty-five works has ever been published.
Héloïse Luzzati, Founder & Artistic Director, Biography
A committed artist, Héloïse Luzzati has been fighting for several years to give visibility and recognition to female composers. In 2020, she founded “Elles – Women Composers” – an association whose mission is to promote the presence of women composers in concert programs. The project of the association is based on research, research and reading of forgotten manuscripts and the study of scores. It distributes it, in particular through its own festival, “Un Temps pour Elles”, and its video channel, “La Boîte à Pépites”, both directed by Héloïse Luzzati as artistic director.
In 2022, Luzzati created and became artistic director of the new label La Boîte à Pépites, which continues and expands this mission by adding a new objective: a series of concept albums, each devoted to a single composer. It was born out of a collaboration with Mireille Faure, the sound engineer in charge of all record projects.
Héloïse Luzzati collaborates with many cultural organizations such as the Orchester National d’Avignon-Provence, the Orchester National d’Île-de-France, the Abbaye de Royaumont and the Palazzetto Bru Zane, and is committed to the dissemination the widest possible range of his research and reading discoveries. .
Passionate about chamber music, Héloïse Luzzati graduated from the CNSMDP in the class of Roland Pidoux and Xavier Phillips. She also received advice from Philippe Muller, Marc Coppey, Hatto Beyerle, Alain Planès and members of the Quatuor Ysaÿe. A cellist, she frequently performs alongside Xavier Phillips, Célia Oneto Bensaid, Dana Cioccarlie, Marie-Josèphe Jude, Léa Hennino and Alexandre Pascal.
Comments are closed.