(b Paris, 23 Nov 1961). French composer. After studying music analysis and composition with Françoise Gangloff, Christian Manen and Louis Saguer (from 1979), he entered the Paris Conservatoire (graduated 1983, premier prix for composition), where his teachers were Ballif, Marius Constant, Nigg and Philippot. During a two-year residency at the Académie de France in Rome (1983–5), he met Scelsi, who had a great influence on him. From 1987 he was head of the chamber music department of Radio France, a position he relinquished in 1991 to devote himself entirely to composition. He has also held residencies at the Casa de Velasquez (Spain) and with a number of French orchestras (from 1993). His early works, which culminate with the First Symphony (1983–4, dedicated to Elliott Carter), are rooted in a constructivist post-Webernian aesthetic. Later compositions, beginning with the Cello Concerto (1985–7, dedicated to Dutilleux), draw on the melodic continuity displaced by the predominant aesthetic of the postwar period. This change of style has placed Bacri in the musical aesthetic of his own time, where a spirit of reconciliation prevails. His honours include the grand prize of l'Académie du Disque (1993), and several awards from SACEM and the Académie des Beaux-Arts. (Grove Online)