Sylvia Soublette

Sylvia Soublette Asmussen (February 5, 1924 – January 29, 2020) was a Chilean composer, singer, choirmaster and educator. She won the 1964 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Gold Medal, the 1997 Critics Award from the Valparaíso Art Critics Circle, the 1998 music medal from the National Music Council, and the Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit, which was awarded posthumously. She published and performed under the name Sylvia Soublette. Early life and family Soublette was born in Viña del Mar to a musical family. Her brother is the musicologist Gastón Soublette. Their mother, Isabel Asmussen Urrutia, was a singer, and their father, Luis Soublette García-Vidaurre, took them to choral concerts. Their paternal grandmother was composer Rosa García Vidaurre. Sylvia Soublette began singing with her cousins at age 12. In 1941, while studying at the Colegio de los Sagrados Corazones, she founded the Coro Femenino Viña del Mar. She later founded a male choir at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso and a mixed one at the same institution in 1945. The next year, she married Gabriel Valdés, who later became Chile’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. They had three children (Maximia