Sofía Rocha (b. 1996), writes music of uncompromising emotional intensity while exploring movement, poetics, chance, cognition, and counterpoint through an eclectic set of frameworks. She was the winner of a 2024 ASCAP Morton Gould Award, the 2022 Hermitage Prize at the Aspen Music Festival, a 2022 Copland House Residency Award, and 2021 International Contemporary Ensemble Call for ___ Commission. Sofía has been a composition fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival and has held residences at Macdowell, Avaloch Farm Music Institute and the Hermitage Artist Retreat. Recent and upcoming projects include commissioned works for the 2026 Tanglewood Festival, the International Contemporary Ensemble in collaboration with the New World Symphony and a collaboration for a major work for clarinet and live electronics, a becoming, or taking, with Gleb Kanasevich.
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) and as ‘music at its most elemental’ (The Boston Classical Review). She has also received honors from the American Composers Orchestra/Earshot, NATS, the New York Youth Symphony/First
Music Commission program, Emory University, the New England Philharmonic, Earplay New Music Ensemble, and Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music Youth Orchestra. She has worked with ensembles including the Arditti Quartet, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Brentano String Quartet, Longleash, Sandbox Percussion, Telegraph Quartet, Emory Symphony Orchestra, Fifth House Ensemble, Music from Copland House, arx duo, Hub New Music, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, DeCoda, loadbang, Castle of our Skins, Transient Canvas, Hypercube, and Duo Entre-Nous, as well as numerous solo performers.
Sofía is currently a PhD candidate in the Music and Multimedia Composition program at Brown University studying with Wang Lu, Anthony Cheung, Eric Nathan and Ed Osborn. 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. Sofía 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 while studying composition with Avner Dorman and conducting with Vimbayi Kaziboni and Russell McCutcheon. Sofía has attended festivals such as the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, CULTIVATE at Copland House, June in Buffalo, Connecticut Summerfest, Fresh Inc. Festival and Divergent Studio, studying and taking master classes with composers such as Marcos Balter, Nina Young, Christopher Theofanidis, Augusta Read Thomas, Derek Bermel, Han 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, an amateur photographer, and a regular contributor to I CARE IF YOU LISTEN.
Biography
