LUBAWA SYDORENKO - UKRAINE
BORN 20 APRIL
Lubawa Sydorenkowas born in 1979 in Lviv. She is a laudreate of the Levko Revutsky Prize (2007), and the Borys Lyatoshynsky Prize (2015). During her years of study at the National Lysenko Music Academy of Lviv (graduated in 2004, completed postgraduate studies in 2007), she twice won the international composition competition Gradus ad Parnassum (Kyiv, 2001, 2003). In 2005, as a recipient of the Polish Ministry of Culture’s Gaude Polonia scholarship, she studied composition at the Cracow Music Academy with Zbigniew Bujarski. In 2004, the Swiss publisher Sordino concluded a contract with Lubawa Sydorenko to publish her chamber works.
Her compositions, ranging from symphonic and chamber to electronic, are performed in many countries by leading Ukrainian and foreign musicians and ensembles. Among her most important premieres in recent years were the Ad initio symphony commissioned by the Bayerischer Rundfunk and recorded by the Bamberger Symphoniker (Leipzig), as well as premieres performed at such major festivals as Warsaw Autumn 2007, Radio Dwójka (Warsaw), Deutschlandfunk (Cologne), Velvet Curtain 2006 (Munich), Tribune of Contemporary Women Composers 2007 (Cologne), Kyiv Music Fest and Season’s Music Premieres (Kyiv), Contrasts (Lviv), Two Days and Two Nights (Odessa), and others.
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MARGARET BONDS - USA
DIED 20 APRIL
Margaret Allison Bonds was an American composer and pianist. One of the first black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes.
Among Bonds' works from the 1950s is The Ballad of the Brown King, a large-scale work originally for voice and piano, but later revised for chorus, soloists, and orchestra. To a text by Hughes, the work tells the story of the Three Wise Men, focusing primarily on Balthazar, the so-called "brown king". A large work in nine movements, the piece combines elements of various black musical traditions, such as jazz, blues, calypso, and spirituals. The piece was first performed in December 1954 in New York. Bonds was writing other works during this period of her career, as well; her Three Dream Portraits for voice and piano, again setting Hughes' poetry, were published in 1959; her D Minor Mass for chorus and organ was first performed in the same year.
Another work based on a text by Langston Hughes was first performed in February 2018 in Washington, DC by the Georgetown University Concert Choir under Frederick Binkholder. Entitled "Simon Bore the Cross", it is a cantata for piano and voice, and is based on the spiritual He Never Said a Mumblin' Word.
As an outgrowth of her compositions for voice, Bonds later became active in the theater, serving as music director for numerous productions and writing two ballets. She also wrote several music-theater works, including Shakespeare in Harlem to a libretto by Hughes; this premiered in 1959. In 1965, at the time of the Freedom March on Montgomery, Alabama, Bonds wrote Montgomery Variations for orchestra, dedicating it to Martin Luther King, Jr.. Two years later, she moved to Los Angeles, teaching music at the Los Angeles Inner City Institute and at the Inner City Cultural Center. Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic premiered her Credo for chorus and orchestra in 1972; Bonds died unexpectedly a few months later, shortly after her 59th birthday.
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