Philippe Leroux was born in 1959 in Boulogne-sur-Seine (France). In 1978, he enrolled at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, studying under Ivo Malec, Claude Ballif, Pierre Schäeffer, and Guy Reibel, where he earned three first prizes. During this time, he also studied with Olivier Messiaen, Franco Donatoni, Betsy Jolas, Jean-Claude Eloy and Iannis Xenakis. In 1993, he was appointed a resident at the Villa Medici (Prix de Rome), where he remained until October 1995.
He composes music that is synthetic rather than disruptive. With its sound architecture, dialectic of movement, and mechanics of resonance flows and dynamic particles, composer Philippe Leroux’s music is kinetic. It brings movement to the forefront by extracting its internal dramaturgy. Beyond its occasional virtuosity, it is grounded in perception and the structural connections between sounds. Motion and gesture play a significant role in articulating the relationships between sonic events, in a constant dialogue between drama and poetry.
In 2022, his opera *L'annonce faite à Marie* received a triumphant reception from both the press and the public (nominated for the Victoires de la Musique, winner of the 2022 Trophy awarded by ForumOpera.com, and winner of the Grand Prize for Best Production of the Year at the 60th French Critics’ Union Awards). The same opera, revived in 2026 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, earned him the 2026 Music Prize awarded by the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD).
He is the composer of more than ninety works, including symphonies, vocal works, pieces incorporating electronic elements, chamber music, and acousmatic works. These works were commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, the Südwestfunk Orchestra, the Lorraine National Orchestra, the Nice Philharmonic Orchestra, IRCAM, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne de Montréal, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, INA-GRM, the Avanta Ensemble, the Ensemble Court-Circuit, the Ensemble 2e2m, the Ensemble L’itinéraire, the Ensemble Ictus, the Solistes XXI, the Musica Festival, the BIT 20 Ensemble, the Koussevitsky Foundation, the Siemens Foundation, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Athelas Ensemble, the CIRM, INTEGRA, the Berlioz Festival, as well as other French and international institutions.
His works are performed and broadcast in many countries: the Donaueschingen Festival, Radio France’s “Présences” Festival, the IRCAM Agora and Manifeste Festivals, the Venice Biennale, the Bath Festival, the Musica Festival, the ISCM Days in Stockholm, the MNM Festival in Montreal, the “Musiques en Scènes” Festival in Lyon, the Manca Festival, the Bergen Festival, the Ultima Festival in Oslo, the Tage für Neue Musik in Zurich, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the Lorraine Philharmonic Orchestra, the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, Klangforum Wien, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hangzhou Symphony Orchestra...
He has received numerous awards: the Hervé Dugardin Prize, the 1996 Prize for Best Contemporary Musical Composition, the SACEM Composers’ Prize, the André Caplet and Nadia and Lili Boulanger Prize, the Paul and Mica Salabert Prize for his work Apocalypsis, the Arthur Honegger Prize from the Fondation de France for his entire body of work, and the Orchestra Prize (Südwestrundfunk Orchester) at the 2025 Donaueschingen Music Festival.
In 2015, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada; the Academy of Fine Arts of the Institut de France awarded him the Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation Prize for Musical Composition; and his album *Quid sit Musicus* received the 2015 Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros.
He has published several articles on contemporary music and has given lectures and composition courses at institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley; Harvard; the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow; the Grieg Academy in Bergen; Columbia University in New York; the Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen; the Catholic University of Santiago, Chile; the Royaumont Foundation; IRCAM; the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau; the National Higher Conservatories of Music in Paris and Lyon; the Domaine Forget in Quebec; and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta…
From 2001 to 2006, he taught composition at IRCAM as part of the computer music program, and in 2005–2006 at McGill University in Montreal (Canada) as part of the Langlois Foundation. From 2007 to 2009, he was artist-in-residence at the Arsenal in Metz and with the Orchestre National de Lorraine, and beginning in 2011 with the MEITAR ensemble in Tel Aviv; from 2009 to 2011, he was a visiting professor at the University of Montreal (UdeM). Since September 2011, he has been an associate professor of composition at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, where he also directs the Digital Composition Studio.
His discography includes about 40 CDs, including eight solo albums.