Composer, performer, and sound installation artist Laetitia Sonami combines text, music and found sounds from the world, in compositions which have been described as "performance novels". Her signature instrument, the Lady's Glove, tracks the slightest motion of her fingers, hand and arms: through its use, Sonami can create performances where those tiny movements shape the music and environment.

Sonami's sound installations combine audio and kinetic elements embedded in ubiquitous objects such as light bulbs, rubber gloves, bags, and more recently toilet plungers ("Sounds of War").

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

Currently, Sonami is touring "I.C.You" a live cinema performance in collaboration with Sue Costabile, and "The Appearance of Silence (the Invention of Perspective)", a solo performance with the lady's glove.

Awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts (2002), Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Award (2000), the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2000), and a Creative Work Fund award (2000) for a collaboration with Nick Bertoni and the Tinkers Workshop ("BAGS").

Born in France, Sonami moved to the United States in 1975 and lives in Oakland, California. She is guest lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute, Milton Avery MFA program at Bard College and Mills College, Oakland. Aside from a few CD compilations, she has yet to commit to record her sound pieces or document her performances...

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