Raphaèle Biston was born in Lyon, France, in 1975.

Her latest pieces show her multifaceted interests in composition: instrumental writing (Sable for 2 alto flutes,Lignes de Fuite for 5 musicians, Ressac for 13 instruments); real-time or pre-recorded computer music (Présence for double bass and electronics, Parages for 5 musicians and electronics, Sillages for 8 musicians and electronics); performances, in collaboration with writers, actors, stage directors, or with adventurous instrumentalists (Schläfer, for trumpet, actress and electronics, Fricassée de Maris, with an actress and semi-improvised music).

She studied flute and composition in Lyon and Geneva. She also plays the flute as an improviser.

Her different musical pieces are concerned with recurrent preoccupations: the elaboration of the quality of the tone colour, in order to reveal its poetical potential, between noise and sound, sound and silence; the use of concrete instrumental gestures to initiate the composition, the writing of these gestures and the attitude of playing; the “to and fro” between structuring and intuition; the use of a variety of sounds, including the rough and fragile; the development of non tempered musical scales building universes that “seem” familiar; the play between the boundaries of familiar and strange territory; the meeting of nature and machine, mechanical and fluid, sensitive and insensitive; music that gives the auditor a bit of room to wander, yet maintaining a clear and constant purpose.

Her music has been performed in various contemporary music concerts and festivals, such as: Musiques en Scène (Lyon), Musica (Strasbourg), Manca (Nice), Why Note(Dijon), Les Musiques (Marseille), Forum (Moscow), Double Double (Stockholm),Rondò (Milan), the Venice Biennale, Musiques Démesurées (Clermont-Ferrand), SIMN(Bucharest), Ear Unit Series (Los Angeles), Percumania (Paris), by performers such asEnsemble 2e2m, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, l’Instant Donné,Multilatérale, Ear Unit, Le Concert Impromptu, Les Temps Modernes, Divertimento Ensemble, Ex Novo, Quatuor Béla, Op. Cit., Charlotte Testu, Marco Blaauw, etc.