about
Lil Lacy
Photo by Rune Svenningsen
Danish American Lil Lacy is a composer whose curiosity is at the center of her music. She works with the meeting of medias and genres, focusing on the connectivity within music. Creating without the limitations of the classical structures, Lacy is also a performer, a singer and an experimental cellist. This unique perspective offers her music a malleability to space.
Lacy’s music is born in the meeting with performers, audiences, and space. From installation to orchestra, she creates tailor-made universes, claiming the right to be heard.
Lacy has composed for orchestra, choir, installations and electronics, and in collaboration with art films, theatre, visual arts and dance. Her curiosity allows her to move between worlds, bringing herself into each one, whilst absorbing a bit of them, each time.
A reflection on our time and culture, Lil Lacy’s music questions and inquires on who we were and where we are going, whilst dreaming of a better future. Her work deals with the big questions of her generation, human connectivity, the darkness of society, our culture and heritage, and nature in a context of climate change and a drastic need for a better future.
Her first orchestral work Aliento del Mar, written for accordionist Bjarke Mogensen and Gävle Symphony Orchestra, is inspired by the movement of the tide, the push and pull of large forces. The music, as does nature, constantly transforms, “from something that can barely be heard, to something that can barely be stopped again" (Arbetarbladet 2021). With her use of plastic bags, Lacy deepens the ocean sound, whilst highlighting the issue of plastic waste in our waters.
Lil Lacy studied composition at Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus with Simon Steen-Andersen, Niels Rønsholdt, Bent Sørensen and Juliana Hodkinson. She also studied at the music department of University of California San Diego with professor Mark Dresser, Anthony Davis, Katharina Rosenberger and Wilfrido Terrazas. Furthermore she studied with Marcos Balter, Rolf Martinsson and Sarah Kirkland Snider. In 2020 she received the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize.
Lacy composed, arranged and recorded music for different concerts and performances, a.o., the chamber opera One world above, another below, 45’ (2019), the site-specific choir performance Concert for a Space and Time, 60' (2019), the 80 meter long audiovisual installation The Wave, 17’ (2023) in collaboration with Vertigo, as well as the staged choir piece CRAWL CRAWL CRAWL, 60’ (2022) and the dance performance Detached from Others, 60’ (2025), in close collaboration with scenographer and director Jon R. Skulberg and Convoi Exceptionnel. Lil Lacy initiated and composed the large scale gesamtkunstwerk you’re somehow connected, 80’ (2020) that is developed in 3 different formats.
Lacy is a member of the bands Frk. Jacobsen and Valby Vokalgruppe, as a vocalist, keyboard player and experimental cellist. She performed and has had her music performed in Europe, America, Australia and Japan, and released several critically acclaimed and award-winning albums with different ensembles.
Lacy is active and entrepreneurial in the music environment, amongst other things, initiating and facilitating the Composer Collective, and as a board member of Danish Composers’ Society (2023- 2025).
Collaborative creative processes and long-term collaborations are appreciated deeply by Lacy. Lacy is grateful to be able to unfold and develop long-term collaborations as the Composer in Residence at the Danish Philharmonic Orchestra (2024-2027) as well as Gävle Symphony Orchestra (SE) (2025-2026).
Lacy continues the exploration of her great interest in staged, spatial and site-specific productions, as well as her love of working with orchestras, chamber ensembles and soloists, in different collaborative productions.
Lil and I have over the past three years collaborated on multiple projects and from the very first meeting I was struck by her enthusiasm and eagerness, her curiosity and expressiveness as a human being and an artist. I am sure that Lil's wonderful approach to collaboration as such and her personal and rich style of writing and expressing herself through music will continue to be highly rewarded.
Jonas Frølund, clarinetist and entrepreneur
I have had the privilege of getting to know Lil Lacy and her music for almost two years. She is a composer with original and deeply felt musical ideas, and she has an extraordinary ability and energy to translate these ideas into orchestral music. Lacy's great interest and energy in the composition process creates a strong development as a composer, which has already led to many performances, and she is now working on several orchestral commissions. Lil Lacy is actively involved in cultural life and is enterprising in her initiatives and unique collaborative projects.
I foresee a bright future for her as a composer!
Rolf Martinsson
Composer
Professor of Composition at the Malmö
Academy of Music, Lund University
World premiere of Aurōra, for orchestra, with Gävle Symphony Orchestra and conductor Christian Reif, 2023. Photos by Gävle Symphony Orchestra.
EDUCATION
2018 - 2020 / Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in composition with prof. Simon Steen-Andersen, Juliana Hodkinson, Niels Rønsholdt and Bent Sørensen. Studies with Anthony Davis, Katharina Rosenberger, Roger Reynolds, Mark Dresser and Wilfrido Terrazas at University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2019
2016 - 2018 / Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, MA in composition with prof. Simon Steen-Andersen and Niels Rønsholdt. Studies with Mark Dresser at UCSD and with Roscoe Mitchell at Mills College in 2018
2013 - 2014 / Copenhagen Business School / Courses in Management of Creative Business Processes
2011 – 2013 / Voice Embodiment / Studies of vocal- and respiratory techniques and performance with Anne Rosing
2007 - 2010 / The Rhythmic Music Conservatory, BA in voice, dance and music. Studied Classical Indian Carnatic singing and konnakol in Chennai, India for 2 months 2009-2010
NOMINATIONS & AWARDS & COMPOSER IN RESIDENCIES
2025 – 2026 / Composer in Residence at the festival Festival & Friends (DK)
2025 – 2026 / Composer in Residence at Gävle Symphony Orchestra (SE)
2024 – 2027 / Composer in Residence at the Danish Philharmonic Orchestra (DK)
2023 / Nominated for “Årets Jazzudgivelse” at Danish Music Awards with the band Frk. Jacobsen
2020 / Recipient of the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize for her work as a composer and musician
2016 / Nominated as “Årets nye danske jazznavn” at Danish Music Awards Jazz with the duo Soma & Lil
2015 / Recipient of Danish Music Awards World as “Årets Komponist” with the band Travelling Tribes
2013 / Recipient of Danish Music Awards World as “Årets Komponist” with the band Travelling Tribes
2012 / Nominated at Steppeulven as “Årest Vokalist” with the band Valby Vokalgruppe