𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐞; 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 is a project that started a while ago.

The first spark was probably during my first project le moment dansa : the moment will dance, talking with Bram D’Hont about Muses and for real, when Jean-Denis Michat asked me if I have a Muse somewhere in my re-discovering moments in Lyon.

My answer after some time was: “No.”

And he said: “Yeah, the Muse is probably more a male thing.…”

...but, is it really just a male thing? Can’t females have a Muse? And, why do we tend to connect the Muse with a woman?

Arriving to my last year of studies I asked myself many questions, and one of them was for sure who or what is/was inspiring me… So, I decided to perform pieces and conduct in-depth interviews with female composers Federica Lo Pinto, Sarah Nemtsov, Shiri Riseman, Nina Šenk and Itziar Viloria, whose work I deeply admire and am beyond grateful they were willing to talk with me about their experiences in the compositional world, their sources of inspiration and the creative process, their approach for composing for the saxophone and their thoughts on the word Muse.