THEODORA CORMONTAN - NORWAY
BORN 9 JUNE
BORN 9 JUNE
Theodora Cormontan was a Norwegian American pianist, music publisher and composer, one of the first Norwegian women to have her classical compositions published and widely performed, and the first woman to start a music publishing business in Norway.
Cormontan began her musical education with the town musician in Arendal, where her father served as a Lutheran pastor. She moved to Copenhagen in 1863 to continue her education and pursue a musical career. Her time there was cut short by the death of her mother in 1865, prompting her return to Arendal to run the household of her father. In the period 1865–1879 she continued her career in Arendal, giving both vocal and piano concerts, composing works for the piano and voice (a number of which were published by Warmuth, the leading music publisher in the region), and establishing a music lending library. In 1879 she opened a music publishing house, focusing on the works of women composers.
In 1886, as a result of a major bank failure and a fire that destroyed the family home, Cormontan was forced to sell her music business and emigrate with her father and sister to the United States, where she continued her musical career. In 1887, shortly after her arrival in Sacred Heart, Minnesota, a train accident impaired Cormontan's mobility and her ability to stand, forcing her to give up voice recitals. She focused instead on piano and organ performances as well as giving music lessons, leading choirs, and continuing her composition work, living first with a married sister in Sacred Heart, then with two brothers in Franklin, Minnesota.
The family's economic fortunes slowly declined after 1900. In 1910, at age 70, Theodora Cormontan was the youngest of four surviving unmarried siblings and was the main wage earner in the household. After the deaths of her brothers, Cormontan and her sister entered a home for elderly Norwegian immigrants in Decorah, Iowa in 1917. After her death in 1922, her compositions largely disappeared from view until 2011, when boxes containing her musical legacy were discovered in St. Peter, Minnesota, and recordings of her work were released in Norway, Denmark, and the US.
Cormontan began her musical education with the town musician in Arendal, where her father served as a Lutheran pastor. She moved to Copenhagen in 1863 to continue her education and pursue a musical career. Her time there was cut short by the death of her mother in 1865, prompting her return to Arendal to run the household of her father. In the period 1865–1879 she continued her career in Arendal, giving both vocal and piano concerts, composing works for the piano and voice (a number of which were published by Warmuth, the leading music publisher in the region), and establishing a music lending library. In 1879 she opened a music publishing house, focusing on the works of women composers.
In 1886, as a result of a major bank failure and a fire that destroyed the family home, Cormontan was forced to sell her music business and emigrate with her father and sister to the United States, where she continued her musical career. In 1887, shortly after her arrival in Sacred Heart, Minnesota, a train accident impaired Cormontan's mobility and her ability to stand, forcing her to give up voice recitals. She focused instead on piano and organ performances as well as giving music lessons, leading choirs, and continuing her composition work, living first with a married sister in Sacred Heart, then with two brothers in Franklin, Minnesota.
The family's economic fortunes slowly declined after 1900. In 1910, at age 70, Theodora Cormontan was the youngest of four surviving unmarried siblings and was the main wage earner in the household. After the deaths of her brothers, Cormontan and her sister entered a home for elderly Norwegian immigrants in Decorah, Iowa in 1917. After her death in 1922, her compositions largely disappeared from view until 2011, when boxes containing her musical legacy were discovered in St. Peter, Minnesota, and recordings of her work were released in Norway, Denmark, and the US.
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JOYCE BEETUAN KOH - SINGAPORE
BORN 9 JUNE
As a recipient of the Nadia Boulanger International Foundation Scholarship (France), Joyce Koh studied with Tristan Murail in 1996-97. The following year, she was selected for the course in Composition and Musical Computing at the Institute for the Research and Co-ordination in Acoustic and Music, IRCAM (Paris). In the same year, she was awarded the Young Artist Award 1998 by the Singapore National Arts Council.
Koh’s music has been performed by BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hungarian Radio Budapest Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Résonance Contemporaine, The Song Company of Australia, Nieuw Ensemble, Take 5, and Reconsil, as well as by soloists including [Prodromos Symeonidis]], Frode Haltli, and Thalia Myers. Her compositions for dance include a series of works with The Arts Fission Company, for example ‘In the Name of Red’ (2015), a site-specific work for the inauguration festival of the National Gallery Singapore). Leaning on her concept of multimedia performance as a "theatre of music", Koh created Away We Go (2015) together with Étienne Turpin, commissioned by NTU Centre of Contemporary Art), and On the String (2010), commissioned by Singapore Arts Festival). She co-created the interactive sound installation The Canopy (2010-13), presented at World Stage Design Festival (UK 2013) and International Computer Music Conference (UK 2011). Koh collaborated with theatre director Steve Dixon on adapting T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land in a one-actor piece with video and electroacoustic sound.
Koh learned the piano from an early age. Her fascination for resonating strings in particular and sonic timbre in general led to taking up music professionally, coming to think of composition as a form of ‘calligraphy on a sonic canvas’. Through computer-assisted composition and audio processing, she could imagine sounds beyond those produced by acoustic instruments, and sonic space. She developed a concept of "theatre of music", where the sonic canvas became physical, i.e., the stage. That is, "whilst the narrative structure of the composition may be based on theatrical devices, the sound objects (effectively the play’s characters) are driven by musical identities and relationships". Koh’s work often starts with an external structure from architecture, calligraphy, or science. The 2010 multimedia performance ‘On the String’ is a consolidation of this approach. Asking herself: “What if we could hear the sounds of vibrating one-dimensional strings? Or the sonic texture created by various vibration patterns of a string curving space? If these imaginings were audible, what would they sound like?” Composition becomes a "systematic musicalisation of certain features of the scientific thought and, through interdisciplinary investigations (music, visual arts, interactive design, instrument design, light), culminates in a multimedia performance".
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