Grégoire Rolland

Composer and organist Grégoire Rolland holds a Master’s degree in composition (harmony, counterpoint, fugue), a prize for analysis, a Master’s degree in organ and a prize for orchestration from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. He also holds a Master’s degree in composition from the Haute École de Musique de Genève and a licence in music and musicology from the Sorbonne.

Composing for solo instruments as well as for orchestra, he draws his inspiration essentially from three elements: Gregorian chant, Nature, and the contribution of Asian culture, which fascinates him. He also works on the relationship between music and the other arts, combining expressiveness and elaboration techniques (in relation to rhetoric, writing, painting or photography). For several years now, he has been developing a compositional technique that combines the temporality of Asian ideogram writing with the deployment of inherent musical forms. He has won several composition prizes, including 1st prize in the Vienna Cathedral competition. He has been commissioned by numerous institutions, including Musique Sacrée à Notre-Dame de Paris, the Fondation de Lacour, the Chœur et l’Orchestre de la Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, the festival Les Très riches heures de l’orgue en Berry, Toulouse les Orgues, Radio France, the Chaillol festival, the Nouveaux Horizons festival, the Sequenza 9.3 vocal ensemble, the Dulci Jubilo chamber choir and the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire.

His works have been heard in Europe (France, Switzerland, Belgium, England, Spain, Germany, Austria...), the United States and Japan. They are performed by many renowned artists and are also the subject of several discographic recordings, notably the critically acclaimed monographs Les Sacrements (2020, Hortus) and Shēng (2022, Anima Nostra).

Applauded in recital on numerous stages both abroad and in France, he is a 2016 laureate of the Fondation Banque Populaire and of the Prix d’encouragement en composition musicale de l’Académie des Beaux- Arts 2021. Appointed titular organist of Aix-en-Provence Cathedral in March 2018, he is also professor of composition, orchestration and writing at the CRR d’Avignon.

In 2024, he won the schoolchildren’s prize and the teachers’ prize at the Superphoniques organized by the Maison de la Musique Contemporaine. He was appointed composer-in-residence at the Auditorium-Orchestre National de Lyon for the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 seasons.