IRINA ODĂGESCU - ROMENIA
BORN 23 MAY
Irina Odăgescu-Ţuţuianu is a Romanian music educator and composer. Irina was born on 23 May 1937 in Bucharest, and studied at the Bucharest Music Conservatoire with Tudor Ciortea and Andrei Vieru. She also took summer courses with Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti and Karlheinz Stockhausen. After completing her studies, she became a professor at the Bucharest Conservatoire.
Odăgescu's works have been performed internationally in Europe, Asia and the United States, and she has lectured at international conferences held in the University of Pau in France and in Fairbanks University, Alaska. She has co-written the texts Practical Studies for Reading in Keys for Two Voices in 1972, and Practical Studies for Reading in Old Choral Keys in 1982.
She is the receiver of the Romanian Union of Composers’ Prize (1978–2004), Romanian Academy’s George Enescu Prize (2001), the Viotti- Valesia Prize (Italy), the ‘Ciudad Ibague’ Silver Medal (Columbia).
Odăgescu has composed symphonic, choral, ballet and chamber music. Selected works include:
Youth Everlasting and Life Without End (2005), The Pyre of Bread, Tall Song, Ballet Melos, Sonata for viola solo, Op.48 (1982).
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MAKA MAYA VIRSALADZE - GEORGIA
BORN 23 MAY
Maka Maya Virsaladze is a music composer and assistant professor at the Conservatory of Music in Tbilisi.
Virsaladze graduated from the Zakaria Paliashvili Special School of Music in Tbilisi in 1989. Afterwards, she attended the Conservatory of Music in Tbilisi from 1990–98, where she studied composition with Bidzina Kvernadze and Nodar Mamisashvili, and musicology with Lia Dolidze. From 2000-2001, she studied composition with Walter Zimmermann at the Universität der Künste in Berlin.
In 1994, Virsaladze was awarded the Georgian Ministry of Culture Prize for her composition series Three Romances (including "Song of Siren", "Pyramids," and "Sonnet of Prayer") for soprano and piano. In 1998, she co-founded the Union of Young Georgian Composers and Musicologists in Tbilisi.
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