SOPHIE MARICQ

Sophie Maricq, singer-songwriter, is a global citizen born in 1980 and raised in Spain, with roots in England, Belgium and the US. In addition to music, she has extensive training and professional experience in law, business and communications. Her dream is to continue singing and composing, and to create educational programs with music at the center, which contribute to promoting the natural evolution of each student.

She started out as a rock jam session singer, learning that music has no stylistic barriers: "When we were playing and singing, I felt that gender, color or shape didn't matter. The passion for music put us all in the same place. It was an incomparable, powerful and liberating sensation." She sang with the band Perversions for ten years, while she alternated her role as a singer with her work in the business world, a very demanding job in every way. But even so, she did not give up the music: "It was not negotiable."

Her work takes her to London, but, at the height of her career aspirations, music was stronger: "I left everything to enter a modern music school. The change was not easy, it was a radical transition" She worked hard to continue her studies and get the best out of that learning experience. She then decided to return to Madrid and start her personal musical project. Together with guitarist Iván Díaz she recorded her first EP "Just Be" in London, in which, inspired by strong soul roots and Rhythm'n'Blues, Sophie drank from world music, also drawing on other styles -bossa, funk, Latin jazz or even country -, adding a marked Mediterranean and contemporary character to her style.

Thanks to that EP, she achieved a dream: a scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston (USA), where she surrounded herself with incredible people to learn what she had never imagined. Among a multitude of artists, Sophie met her dear friend and mentor Patricia Zárate, saxophonist, music therapist and businesswoman: “My relationship with music changed completely. I realized what I needed to be ready. It was not about me, but that I was a means to provide a message, sensations and emotions. I discovered it on our first cultural exchange trip together to Africa. That's where my passion for music therapy was born." Sophie has worked in Boston and Panama with children with special needs through the Danilo Pérez Foundation, as well as at the Children's Hospital, homes for the elderly and FANLYC.

At Berklee, she was also fortunate to work on projects with Alejandro Sanz himself, Jorge Drexler, Juan Luis Guerra, Chucho Valdés, Armando Manzanero, Danilo Pérez among other wonderful artists, and with whom she also became her friend, Sole Giménez. With her she recorded a song for the OXFAM Intermón project: Avanzadoras ~ an album of 12 songs tribute to women who move forward and make them move forward ~ and in which artists such as Ana Belén, Estrella Morente, La Mari de Chambao among other artists collaborate. Sophie records a version of Sole Giménez’s song “La Mujer Que Mueve El Mundo” together with Neus Ferri, Rosalía León and Thais Morell. An experience that will not leave her indifferent.

More live shows and music followed, a few years in Madrid and in full vital change, the move to the Sierra de Almería in the South of Spain. Here she meets determined and altruistic artist Jeanne Henny, who she works for to create educational project ChancArte, providing free education to underserved communities in the area. She works alongside talented artists and teachers Jesús Ayala Ortiz, Natalie Rocha Capiello, Daniela Traverso, Emma Randle and Dani Figueras. Sophie also collaborates in this project with very special local artist Sensi Falán with who she ends up taking guitar lessons and establishes a close bond.

In 2022 she works with the multi instrumentalist and producer Lauren Stradmann (LS) on her new project. They start producing “No More”, a song about the effects of war that she composed with the American singer-songwriter Joanna Katzen. "Be There" was born from a text by her father Iván Maricq, and the exquisite music composed by Stradmann. “Resilience” stems from a text by the SOI Association that works with young people in India who have suffered abuse; and a vocal improvisation on a previously produced base created by the talented producer, which already had the name of the song that fits perfectly with the text and overall intention. The cover of "Imagine" is also a creation of LS that he already included on his own album. With this song, Sophie closes the new musical work called "Here and Now", which perfectly defines where this international artist wants to be.