Sofía Rocha

Biography

Sofía Rocha writes music of uncompromising emotional intensity while exploring cognition, randomness, rhythm, and counterpoint within post-tonal frameworks. She writes for all manner of performing forces instrumental, vocal and electronic. Winner of the 2022 Hermitage Prize at the Aspen Music Festival and a 2022 Copland House Residency Award, recent and upcoming projects include newly commissioned works for the International Contemporary Ensemble in collaboration with the New World Symphony, the Emory University Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Youth Symphony via their First Music Commissioning program and a reading of Collage d’hommages with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra through the ACO/Earshot program. Sofía’s first orchestral work, Replier, was described as ‘unforgettable’ and evocative of ‘the feeling of being confronted with something unknowably vast’ (The Boston Globe) as well as ‘music at its most elemental’ (The Boston Classical Review). She has also received honors from ASCAP, the New England Philharmonic, Earplay New Music Ensemble, Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music Youth Orchestra, OM/NI Composition Competition and Tenebrae New Music Ensemble. She has worked with ensembles including the Arditti Quartet, JACK Quartet, Fifth House Ensemble, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, DeCoda, loadbang, Brentano String Quartet, Castle of our Skins, Transient Canvas, Hypercube, arx duo, and Duo Entre-Nous as well as numerous solo performers.

Sofía will be joining the Music and Multimedia Composition PhD program at Brown University in Fall 2023. She received her master’s degree in composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory as a Chancellor’s Scholar and recipient of Elsberry & Gonder Family and Conservatory scholarships. While attending, she studied with Chen Yi, Yotam Haber, Paul Rudy and Zhou Long. Rocha was also the 2019 composer-in-residence for the Graduate Fellowship String Quartet at UMKC. She completed her undergraduate work at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Gettysburg College in 2019, receiving a BA in Music with Honors as a Wagnild Scholar and studying composition with Avner Dorman. She has attended June in Buffalo, Fresh Inc. Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, Divergent Studio, and the Hypercube Composition Lab as a composer, studying and taking master classes with composers such as Augusta Read Thomas, Hannah Lash, Hilda Paredes, Jeffrey Mumford, Alex Temple, Richard Danielpour, Aaron Helgeson, Amy Beth Kirsten, and David Serkin Ludwig, among others. Besides composing, Sofía is also an avid trombonist and conductor, having performed with numerous symphony orchestras, wind ensembles and jazz groups.