Sophia Santulli is singer/songwriter/producer at the helm of Prize. As she finished her Masters in Vocal Performance from San Francisco Conservatory she charged out of the gates with her first self-release (The Split EP, 2011), delighting clubs across San Francisco with her six-piece chamber-electro outfit. Impatiently, she decided to not only write and sing, but produce the entirety of her first full-length album, Surprize Box! a feat of bravery within the bubbling boundaries of burgeoning bedroom-pop. Santulli recorded and co-mixed the record using an analog, no pitch correction/manipulation process at OTR studios, further carving out her dedication to excellent singing without the slick bells and whistles of pop. The bells and whistles all hang in synth form on her minimal and bouncy beats, mastered by EDM heavyweight Glenn Morrison.
Sophia has worked as a backup singer in San Francisco, performing and recording with artists such as Third Eye Blind, John Vanderslice, The Dodos, Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down, Two Foot Yard, and Tidelands at venues including Great American Music Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, Swedish American Hall, Palace of Fine Arts (Noise Pop 2010), and SFMOMA with Minna Choi's Magik*Magik Orchestra. Prize is also a guest vocalist on electronica artist Ladder's (Below Zero) upcoming album. Having already sung operatic leads locally and abroad, she continues to sing with alternative groups such as Classical Revolution and Opera On Tap. She begins her own alt-classical recital series this spring with Prize Presents: Les Heroines.
Prize takes pleasure not only in DIY music production, but in self-styling, concocting the visual elements of her music from scratch, and cobbling together punk maestra costumes with scissors, thread, and fierce abandon (and sometimes a Sharpie). "Prize's emotional urgency makes for a thrilling live show" (MVRemix), theatrical and unpredictable, with a "dash of Victorian cabaret" (Emily Savage, SFBG).
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