Meet the ComposHER: Petra Stump-Linshalm

Check out today's Meet the ComposHER interview with Petra Stump-Linshalm!

Petra is a clarinetist and a composer. She studied clarinet at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and bass clarinet at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.

She plays in groups as well as as a soloist and is not only interested in the classical repertoire, but also in experimental, contemporary and improvised music. In recent years she has also discovered composing for herself. For the Duo Stump- Linshalm thus far over 120 works were composed.

Learn more about her and her outstanding works in the Meet the ComposHer of this week!

My interest in contemporary music was sparked soon after I had begun studying clarinet at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts. So intrigued was I by it that I decided to study bass clarinet at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. At some point I began to wonder how my own music might sound and started composing. There are many contrasting aspects between interpreting and composing music, but I think the essential difference is that as an interpreter my focus is always to a certain extent on the listeners, I want to make them happy and to help convey the intention of the music; as a composer I am focused on myself and my own happiness.

Many many composers - just to mention a few names: Ligeti, Sciarrino, Stockhausen, Raxach, Ambrosini, Kurtag, Billone and many others.

Start to compose not only for my own instrument but also for other instruments! Because in the very beginning I thought I would only write for clarinets!

Already as a young musician I had worked regularly with the composers of the pieces I was playing, contributing actively to the realisation of compositional ideas and at the same time exploring the bounds of my own instrument. At some point I began to wonder how my own music might sound; it took a while to write my first piece, but I soon began to enjoy imagining how I might express the taste of a particular whisky or the scent of a rose as sound or musically convey a visual image. Other times I would simply look into myself and explore my inner world of sounds. To me composing is not only about being free but about giving expression to my perception of the world.

UISGE BEATHA [ɯʃkje 'bɛha] – A Guide to Flavours for solo contrabass clarinet (2015) Uisge Beatha, pronounced ushkeba, means “water of life”. In my piece, different whisky aromas are described in sounds, and the taste experience of liquid gold is transformed into a listening experience.

I recommend enjoying an appropriately selected whisky with each movement!

The 8 Movements:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Lotta Wennäkoski - andas (2008) for 2 bass clarinets

The bass clarinet is one of the most versatile instruments considering the huge register and the possibilities of different timbres. I've always found its sound very human and the air sounds specially fascinating. Breathing was thus a natural starting point to the short bass clarinet duo Andas. I wrote the work in 2008 having two very qualified musicians in mind: Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm. Andas is the Swedish word for breathing

Don’t work too much and take time for all the beautiful things in life!

Always stay with your idea and don’t try to „make” something.

FOLLOW PETRA:
WEBSITE | EMAIL

MARCH 31

THERESA WONG - USA
Born 31 March

More about her here

Find scores by Theresa Wong:

MARIELLE GROVEN - CANADA
Born 31 March

More about her here

Find scores by Marielle Groven:

 Check here last year's composers of the day

31 MARCH 2019

KONSTANTIA GOURZI - GREECE  

BORN 31 MARCH

Konstantia Gourzi spans bridges between cultures and epochs across time and space. She does this as a composer, where she finds her voice in unifying elements that seem to have nothing in common. She also does it as a conductor and teacher, where in consonance with others she constructs a new world of equal opportunities, between male and female, the strange and the familiar.

A Greek now living in Germany, Konstantia Gourzi was born in Athens in 1962. She knows that finding artistic authenticity today is a particular challenge. Even more so since technical progress offers composers almost unlimited access to the musical creations of all times and places. The more one is affected by different stimuli and the more one has to process them, the greater the challenge in finding a clear, yet individual artistic voice. However, the greater also the spectrum for inspiration.

As a composer, Konstantia Gourzi explores musical and sonic phenomena in her inexhaustible and constantly expanding range. Above all, she is interested in the intuitive, irrational parts of the human psyche. Her music is never purely intellectual or conceptual; her experiments are, at the core, based on a profoundly sensed experience. That means that intuition and sensual experience always play a vital role in her creative processes. In her music, she seeks to go beyond the limits of the rational, the definable, allowing the music to take its own shape from the forces within itself – where the distinction between fixed contours and improvisatory freedom is often transcended.

♫ LISTEN

Nine Fragments of an Eternity by Konstantia Gourzi

► KONSTANTIA GOURZI'S WEBSITE 

PARISA SABET  - IRAN 

BORN 31 MARCH

Iranian-Canadian composer, Parisa Sabet, creates a sonic world that is rich, layered, lyrical, and accessible to listeners. She draws from both the drama and the commonplace in her personal experiences to integrate unique elements of Eastern and Western musical languages, incorporating varied timbral and instrumental effects. Her repertory ranges from solo pieces to orchestral works, as well as sound design and original film scores. Since 2015, she divides her time between full-time freelance composer at night, and full-time mother by day—a new lifestyle that informs the gift of breakthrough in her compositions.

Professionally, her compositions have won various competitions and have been performed in different venues in North America. Sabet’s solo alto flute piece, Nay Nava, won the 2011 Timothy Munro (eighth blackbird’s flutist) Solo Flute Competition in conjunction with the CCPA composition program. In addition, Nawruz for wind ensemble was selected for the 2011 Chicago College of Performing Art’s Wind Ensemble Composition Contest and has been broadcast several times on Chicago's Classical and Folk Music Radio (98.7 WFMT). Her choral composition, Universal Brotherhood, was selected by MacMillan Singers to be performed at their Contemporary Showcase Concert in 2014. Her recent song cycle, Dance in Your Blood, based on three Rumi poems won the Top Prize place at the Violet Archer Composer’s Prize 2014 and is published in the Plangere Canadian Composers Series.

She has scored several documentaries centered on stories of Iranians who have been persecuted, exiled and migrated due to their beliefs including From Baku to Belmont and Layegheh directed by Rashin Fahandej. The most recent, Dust-Flower-Flame, about the Iranian poet Tahirih Qurratul-Ayn, a female poet in 19th century Iran, has been screened all around the world, including at Stanford University, University of Maryland, The Regent Street Cinema, UCLA, SVA Theatre New York, Toronto, Yale University, Concordia University, Le Nouvel Odéon, Laemmle Music Hall.

♫ LISTEN

Geyrani for Violin solo by Parisa Sabet 

► PARISA SABET'S WEBSITE