Sébastien Béranger is born in Reims in 1977. He studied at the conservatories of Reims and Lille . Then, he enters the composition class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP) with Emmanuel Nunes, Michaël Levinas, Yann Geslin, Luis Naón and Michelle Réverdy where he gets prices of music analysis, composition and composition with new technologies.
At the same time, he obtains a DEA in aesthetic and sciences of art at the university of Lille III on “The spectrum and the acoustic reality productive of curved scales in 20th century music” and a doctorate in musicology at the University of Nice (UNSA) with a thesis on “The parametric spaces in the instrumental music since 1950”.
The first laureate of the International Foundation Lili and Nadia Boulanger for 2001-2002, he won the contest Opera Prima Europa in Rome in 2001. Sébastien Béranger was also a finalist of the contest Ton Bruynel 2003 (The Nederland), of the II Concurso Internacional de Miniaturas Electroacústicas (Spain), won an honorific mention at MÚSICA VIVA 2003 4th Electro-acoustic Composition Competition (Portugal) and a 2d price at ZKM’s International Competition for Electroacoustic Music 2006 (Germany). He also took part in the Forum de la Jeune Création Musicale of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and in the 3d International Forum for Young Composers of the ensemble Aleph. In 2006, Sébastien Béranger obtains the musical composition grant from the French Académie des Beaux-Arts (Institut de France).
He synthetizes, confronts, and fuses the idioms of spectral music, post serialism, and post modal tendencies. Like a sculptor, he works within space to create a metaphorical representation of different musical elements (pitch, duration, dynamics).
His music has been played by Christophe Desjardins, Sophie Deshayes, by the ensembles 2e2m, Accroche Note, Alter Ego, Aleph, Assonance, by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, by the saxophones quartet Axone and has been scheduled in the festivals Musica, Nuits Bleues, Nicephore Days and Gaudeamus Music Week.
