La Boîte à Pépites, New Classical Record Label Dedicated To Female Composers, to Launch in October

La Boîte à Pépites is a new classical record label dedicated to releasing music by women composers. Founded by cellist Héloïse Luzzati, the label has ambitious plans to discover and record works by women composers that have rarely, if ever, been heard before or were lost over the decades. The label launches in North America October 21, 2022 with a 3CD boxset of the complete works of French composer Charlotte Sohy, followed in 2023 with a collection of works by Rita Strohl (1865-1941) with many others in the pipeline including the British composers Liza Lehmann, Alice Mary Smith and Adela Maddison.

A number of 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 more.

The record label forms one part of the "Elles - Women Composers" project - devised by Héloïse Luzzati - which began with the creation of the "Un Temps pour Elles" music festival in France and soon followed by the YouTube channel "La Boîte à Pépites" which today contains more than 60 videos, from animated documentaries to a video advent calendar - a goldmine of short videos intended to let everyone have fun discovering the works and the lives of women who remained in the shadows.

First Album Release

"Charlotte Sohy - Compositrice de la Belle Epoque" is the first collection to be released on the new label on October 21, 2022. Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955) composed around 35 works and her Piano, Chamber and Orchestral pieces are spread here across 3CDs. With the exception of the Rustic Triptych, this is the first time these pieces have been recorded.

The decision to devote the very first album to Charlotte Sohy arose from founder and artistic director Héloïse Luzzati's encounters with conductor Debora Waldman and Charlotte Sohy's grandson François-Henri Labey. Thanks to immense amounts of work and devotion to the task, Labey was able to preserve and digitize all of his grandmother's compositions, providing the scores without which the present set of CDs would not have been possible.

"Charlotte Sohy - Compositrice de la Belle Epoque" is available in a 3CD box set with beautifully illustrated booklet notes, as well as via online streaming platforms and download.

Héloïse Luzzati, Founder & Artistic Director says: "A few years ago, the question of the role of women in the history of music began to gain a certain importance in my life as a musician. How could I have spent so many years without ever having played a piece composed by a woman? That is why I created the association 'Elles - Women Composers' whose mission is to breathe new life into unknown or at best barely known works by women. Many long hours spent reading manuscripts or first editions allowed us to exhume pieces that seemed worthy of a good position in the standard musical repertoire. In that fertile terrain, our desire, indeed our conviction of the absolute necessity of sharing these works kept growing stronger.

The new record label La Boîte à Pépites is continuing and expanding this mission by adding a new goal: the release of a series of concept albums each devoted to a single woman composer. She and her work are the focus of each album, and the pieces are interpreted by multiple musicians in the service of her music. By having the pieces recorded by a plethora of different artists, my hope is to shift the emphasis of the CDs from the players to the composer, and to help her works to, little by little, come to their proper place in the history of classical music."

Charlotte Sohy Biography

Born in France in 1887, Charlotte Sohy was encouraged in her artistic studies by her father. A student of the greatest musicians of her time, such as Louis Vierne or Vincent d'Indy, she was a friend of many brilliant women musicians like 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 household allowed her to fulfill her vocation as a composer alongside her duties as a mother. She sometimes signed 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

As a committed artist, Héloïse Luzzati has been fighting for several years to give visibility and recognition to women composers. In 2020, she founded "Elles - Women Composers" - an association whose mission is to promote the presence of women composers in concert programs. The organization's project is built on the foundation of research, digging up and reading forgotten manuscripts and studying scores. It ensures their diffusion, especially through its own festival, "Un Temps pour Elles," and video channel, "La Boîte à Pépites," both led by Héloïse Luzzati as artistic director.

In 2022, Luzzati created and became artistic director of the new record label La Boîte à Pépites, which continues and expands this mission by adding a new goal: a series of concept albums each devoted to a single woman composer. It resulted from a collaboration with Mireille Faure, the sound engineer in charge of all the record projects.

Héloïse Luzzati collaborates with many cultural organizations such as the National Orchestra of Avignon-Provence, the Orchestre National d'Île-de-France, the Royaumont Abbey and the Palazzetto Bru Zane, and strives for the widest possible diffusion of her 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 from the Ysaÿe Quartet. A cellist, she frequently performs alongside Xavier Phillips, Célia Oneto Bensaid, Dana Cioccarlie, Marie-Josèphe Jude, Léa Hennino and Alexandre Pascal.

Website: La Boîte à Pépites

Test and expand your Broadway knowledge with our new game - The Broadway Match-Up! How well do you know your Broadway casting trivia?	Play the Daily Game, explore current shows, and delve into past decades like the 2000s, 80s, and the Golden Age. Challenge your friends and see where you rank!
How well do you know your Tony Awards history? Take our never-ending quiz of nominations and winner history and challenge your friends.	Can you beat your friends? Play today’s daily Broadway word game, featuring a new theatrically inspired word or phrase every day!