3 AUGUST 2019

SABINE ULUBEANU - ROMENIA  
BORN 3 AUGUST

Sabina Ulubeanu is one of the most complex artistic personalities of her generation, as her work comprises composition, photography, musicology, teaching, experimental performance and directing a young international new arts festival.

She was born in Bucharest, 3.08.1979. Studied piano at the George Enescu Music Highschool and then Composition at the National Music University of Bucharest, with Tiberiu Olah and Doina Rotaru (Master in 2004). In 2001/2002 she studied composition with Violeta Dinescu at the Oldenburg University in Germany and in 2011 completed her PhD studies Summa cum Laudae with the thesis „The Function of Memory in the Construction of Musical Time”, a theme that represents the artistic manifesto of the composer.  She is a member of the Romanian Composers Union. 

Her compositions, chamber music, multimedia or symphonic, are being performed in Romania and abroad (France, Germany, US, Lithuania, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Ukraine, Ireland, Croatia, Estonia, etc) by artists like Arcadia Quartet, Alexandru Tomescu, Laura Buruiana, Matei Varga, Green Thing Ensemble, Ana Topalovic, Barbara Lueneburg, Sonomania Ensemble, Ensemble for New Music Tallin, Peterson Quartet, etc and received national and international prizes. About her music, the composer confesses:

"To write music is for me a necessity, a must. I need to express my emotions. 

So, my music is first of all intimate and subjective, my vision of the world that I perceive in every moment. The Technique should always be just a mean of transforming the Feeling into Ideas and the Ideas into a Musical Matter that others could understand."

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Sonata for Cello & Piano by Sabine Ulubeanu 

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MATHILDE WANTENAAR - NETHERLANDS  
BORN  3 AUGUST   

Amsterdam born composer Mathilde Wantenaar (1993) started her studies at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where she studied classical composition with Willem Jeths and Wim Henderickx. She has written for, and collaborated with, the Dutch National Opera, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dutch Wind Ensemble, the Netherlands Radio Choir, Wishful Singing, the Ferschtman Cello Quartet, Liza Ferschtman, Ralph van Raat, Johannette Zomer and others.

During her composition studies she studied subsidiary subjects piano with Emile Simonis, cello with Maarten Mostert and voice with Maari Ernits. After her first chamber opera premiered during the Opera Forward Festival of the Dutch National Opera she completed her composition studies and was admitted to the Royal Conservatory of The Hague to study classical voice with Rita Dams and Noa Frenkel. Mathilde currently divides her time between her composition practice and vocal studies.


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Seufzer by Mathilde Wantenaar

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30 JUNE 2019

VERA IVANOVA - RUSSIA
BORN 30 JUNE

Visionary composer Joelle Wallach writes music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voices and choruses. Her String Quartet 1995 was the American Composers Alliance nominee for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The New York Philharmonic Ensembles premiered her octet, From the Forest of Chimneys, written to celebrate their 10th anniversary; and the New York Choral Society commissioned her secular oratorio, Toward a Time of Renewal, for 200 voices and orchestra to commemorate their 35th Anniversary Season in Carnegie Hall. Wallach’s ballet, Glancing Below, a 1999 Juilliard Dance Theater showcase production originally commissioned by the Carlisle Project, was premiered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1994, entered the repertory of the Hartford Ballet in February 1995, and received its New York City premiere that June. 

As early as 1980 her choral work, On the Beach at Night Alone, won first prize in the Inter-American Music Awards.Wallach grew up in Morocco, but makes her home in New York City, where she was born. Her early training in piano, voice, theory, bassoon and violin included study at the Juilliard Preparatory Division, and she earned bachelors and masters degrees at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University respectively. In 1984 the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with John Corigliano, granted her its first doctorate in composition.A pre-concert lecturer for the New York Philharmonic for several subscription series, Ms Wallach speaks on a broad range of musical subjects, bringing fresh insights to familiar works and opening doors to modern ones and to those less frequently heard.

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Three Chants and Three Interludes by Vera Ivanova

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ADRIANA HÖLSZKY  - ROMENIA  

BORN 30 JUNE

Adriana Hölszky was born in Bucharest. In the years 1959-1969 she studied piano with Olga Rosca-Berdan at the music school in Bucharest. In 1972, she began to study composition with Ştefan Niculescu as parallel to piano studies at the Bucharest Music Conservatory. In 1976 she moved with her family to Germany. Here she continued her studies, and in 1977-1980 she studied composition at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart with Milko Kelemen, and chamber music with Günter Louegk. During her studies she performed as a pianist of the Trio Lipatti, together with her twin sister, violinist Monika Hölszky-Wiedemann and cellist Hertha Rosa-Herseni.

In 1977 and 1978, she participated in the International Mozarteum Summer Academy, and in 1978-1984 regularly in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. In 1980 she received a teaching position at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, and in 1983 a grant from the Arts Foundation of Baden-Württemberg. In 1986 she took first place at the Composers' Forum of the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. In 1987 she received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of Lower Saxony. In 1992 she took composition seminars in Tokyo and Kyoto, and at the IRCAM in Paris. Her increasing international popularity was shown by three concerts she performed in Athens, Thessaloniki and Boston in 1993.

Between 1997 and 2000, Hölszky was professor of composition at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre, and since 2000 she has been professor of composition at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. Since 2002 she has been a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.

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High Way for one by Adriana Hölszky

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23 MAY 2019

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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Retrospectre II by Irina Odăgescu

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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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Remembrance by Maka Maya Virsaladze

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10 MARCH 2019

CORNELIA TĂUTU - ROMENIA  

BORN 10 MARCH 

Cornelia Tăutu (born 1938) is a Romanian composer best known for film soundtracks. Passionate about music from a very early age, she studied at the National University of Music in Bucharest, where she has a double specialization: music pedagogy and composition. She studied composition with Mihail Jora, Aurel Stroe and Anatol Vieru. She worked at the Institute for Ethnology and Folklore “Constantin Brailoiu” of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. Tăutu has written works including: Divertisment folcloric; Coralia for children’s chorus and orchestra; Rota for chamber ensemble; De Doi (The Two) for viola and cello (1994). Her music has been recorded and issued on CD including: Romanian Women Composers 2, Musica Nova and The Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, 2006;MARIN CONSTANTIN, Electrecord; Romania Today (June 30, 1998) by Dinescu, Dediu, Stroe, Brumariu, et al., Pro Viva (Ger), ASIN: B000007TAJ.

Tăutu has composed music for films including: 1992 Ramînerea; 1988 Drumet în calea lupilor; 1988 The Moromete Family; 1987 Cetatea ascunsa; 1987 Zloty pociag; 1983 Caruta cu mere; 1983 Impossible Love; 1980 Dumbrava minunata; 1978 Actiunea Autobuzul; 1978 Buzduganul cu trei peceti; 1978 Together Again; 1975 Patima.

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Divertisement Flocloric by Cornelia Tăutu

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GRETE VON ZIERITZ - AUSTRIA  

BORN 10 MARCH

Grete von Zieritz was born in Vienna, Austria into a noble family, and grew up in Vienna, Innsbruck and Graz. She received her first piano lessons at the age of six, and later studied with Hugo Kroemer (piano) and Roderick Mojsisovics (composition). She gave her first concert at age eight.

In Berlin, she continued her studies with Martin Krause, a student of Franz Liszt, and Rudolf Maria Breithaupt. After the successful performance of her "Japanese Songs" in 1921, she decided to become a composer. Von Zieritz worked as a music teacher and continued to study in Berlin from 1926 to 1931 under Franz Schreker. In 1939 she was the only woman at the International Music Festival in Frankfurt am Main among composers from 18 nations. In 2009 in Vienna Donaustadt the Zieritzgasse was named after her. She died in Berlin in 2001.

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Minimal Utopia by Grete von Zieritz

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