COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES

Hanna Hartman is a Swedish sound artist, composer and performer living in Berlin. Hartman studied Literature and Theater history at the Universities of Uppsala and Stockholm, Radio and Interactive Art at Dramatiska Institutet and Electroacoustic Music at EMS in Stockholm. 

Since around 1990 she has composed works for radio, electroacoustic music, sound installtions and numerous performances all over the world. She does also write pieces for instrumentalists. Her many awards and grants include Prix Europa (1998), the Karl-Sczuka-Prize (2005), a Villa Aurora grant (2010), the Rosenberg Prize (2011) and the Phonurgia Nova Prize (2006 & 2016). During 2007 and 2008 she was Composer-in-Residence at the Swedish Radio. Her work has been presented in numereous concerts and festivals such as Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Darmstädter Ferienkurse (2012, 2014), Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (2012, 2014), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2013,2016), el nicho aural, Mexico City (2014), Akousma, Montreal (2014), ECLAT festival, Stuttgart (2017), Cut & Splice Festival, Manchester (2017).

Having developed her very own language, the Swedish sound artist and composer Hanna Hartman creates compositions that are exclusively made up from authentic sounds which she has recorded around the world. Sounds are taken out of their original context and thus perceived in their purity. Hanna Hartman seeks to reveal hidden correspondences between the most diverse auditive impressions and in new constellations she creates extraordinary worlds of sound.

Rei Munakata, Japanese conductor and composer based in Sweden, dedicates himself to contemporary art music.
 
Munakata is currently the artistic director and the principal conductor of the Curious Chamber Players Stockholm. Experimentation and curiosity as the ensemble profile, Munakata and the group have been continuously working with young composers with strong originality in different concert platforms since 2003. Munakata, together with CCP, made a successful breakthrough at Darmstädter ferienkurse in 2012, followed by immediate return to Darmstadt and invitations to world’s leading new music festivals such as IMPULS Graz, Time of Music Viitasaari, Gaudeamus Muziekweek Utrecht, to name a few.
Close collaboration with the ensemble’s resident composer Malin Bång, Munakata is probably the best interpreter of her music. Munakata and CCP have portrayed Bång’s works in Ultraschal Festival Berlin, Sound Scotland, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Sampler series Barcelona, Borusan series Istanbul.

Munakata is also the principal conductor of Ensemble Mimitabu Gothenburg and Ensemble Scenatet Copenhagen, and has guest conducted ensembles such as Ensemble Mosaik Berlin, Ensemble Aleph Paris, Kammarensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Oslo Sinfonietta, SMASH Ensemble Salamanca, and Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen.
 
Continuously returning to Klang Avantgarde Music Festival Copenhagen every year ever since the festival was established. Munakata made his appearances with Esbjerg Ensemble twice, Curious Chamber Players Stockholm twice, and during 2016 edition Munakata made his debut with Klangforum Wien.
 
Equally at home in opera house, Munakata performed the Swedish premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Luci mie tradrici at Gothenburg opera together with Gageego! Gothenburg. His journey of Sciarrino’s music continued with Infinito Nero during Warsaw Autumn Festival 2016 conducting Ensemble Scenatet Copenhagen.
 
Munakata has composed music for instrumental chamber groups, ensembles, electronic music, sound installations, and various kinds of daily life objects. In his recent works, Munakata experiments with the identities of various compositional events and their boundaries. He challenges himself for surreal world of connotation by superimposing his personal memories and life experiences.
 
Munakata received second prize award from Via Nova International Composition Competition for Pouring Etiquette (2009) scored for flute, cello, and piano, and was performed by Ensemble Marges during XI. Weimarer Frühjahrstage für zeitgenössische Musik Germany in 2010. The same piece was also selected as the winning piece for Call for Scores SoundOn Festival of New Music in San Diego, and was performed several times in USA. An ensemble piece, Sweeing Buddhist (2008), selected as a part of project “Ensemble 2010”, was performed by Ensemble Modelo62 Den Haag during Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2010. This led his return to the festival with his new work for Curious Chamber Players, Buckle in the Air II (2012). In 2013, Munakata made his debut in Netherlands during Gaudeamus Music Week with Shjo (2013) for ensemble, spectacular ensemble piece based on crunchy footsteps on Nordic snow and miso soup sipping.
 
In 2014, Munakata was granted a long-term residency in Poland by Swedish Konstnärsnamnden to collaborate with ensemble Kwartludium Warsaw/Gdansk. The resulting work, skiego (2015), is the composer’s reflection of recent Polish history and personal memory from the stay in Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw, and Sopot. During the project, Munakata was also invited to compose for NeoQuartet Gransk, and participated in their project Neoarte – New Music Spectrum 2016. His string quartet Pleats (2016), based on Polish pierogi and warmness of family tradition, was performed in Moscow, Gdansk, Härnösand, and Berlin.
 

Nicolai Worsaae studied composition at the Royal Danish Conservatory with Bent Sørensen, Niels Rosing-Schow, Hans Abrahamsen and Hans-Peter Stubbe Teglbjærg as well as at Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Graz with Beat Furrer.
 
Worsaae works with circular forms of movement in which repetitions of small sections serve to freeze musical moments. In this way time, structure and space become clearly apparent in the work. The larger part of Worsaae’s works unfold through a play between developmental and static principles. Stylistically his music contains elements of what could be called “concrete instrumental music”. These are not direct imitations but musical suggestions of concrete sounds.  “It is liberating to work with something concrete when working with sound otherwise is so abstract.  When I move through the city I listen a lot to all kinds of sounds. Many people that listen to abstract music often have an experience similar to listening to concrete sounds, that the music sounds like something specific. If one can work with the suggestion of real sounds the music becomes richer.”
 
His works has been played by Ensemble Intercontemporain (FR), The Ensemble Recherche (DE), Arditti String quartet (UK), London Sinfonietta (UK), Oslo Sinfonietta (NO), The Athelas Sinfonietta (DK), Stockholm Curious Chamber Players (SE), Gothenburg Opera Orchestra (SE), Ensemble Figura (DK), Ars Nova Malmö (SE), Ensemble SCENATET (DK) among others.
Worsaae has received both grants and prizes for his work as composer such as The Danish Arts Council (2010, 2011, 2012) and The Sonning Foundation (2010), the annual prize of the Danish Composers Society (2008), The Idella fund (2008) as well as several smaller scholarships. 
 

 
Simon Løffler’s works range from extremely intimate set-ups to egnimatic constructions, embracing traditional instruments (transformed in various ways) as well as novel instrumental concepts.
Løffler studied Composition with Bent Sørensen, Hans Abrahamsen and Niels Rosing-Schow at The Royal Danish Academy of Music and Music Theory with Lars Bisgaard at The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Composition with Wolfgang Heiniger at Hochschule für musik Hanns Eisler, Berlin, Composition with Simon Steen-Andersen at The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus. Further studies at A.PASS (advanced performance and scenography studies), Brussels. Since 2017 he has been a lecturer in Composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.
Simon Løffler was awarded the 3-year work grant by The Danish Arts Foundation (2015), The prestigious stipendium prize at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (2014) and was awarded by The Danish Arts Foundation for his work c (2013).
His works has been performed by ensembles as Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart (DE), Ensemble Adapter (DE), asamisimasa (NO), SUONO MOBILE (DE), SCENATET (DK), Plus-Minus Ensemble (UK), Speak Percussion (AU) Ensemble Pamplemousse (US), We Spoke (CH), Ensemble hand werk (DE), Curious Chamber Players (SE), Athelas Sinfonietta (DK), Defunensemble (FI) among others.
 
 
Elena Rykova (*1991). Composer, performance artist, improvisator. Born in Ufa, Bashkortostan Republic, Russia. Studied composition, piano, conducting at Special Music College in Ufa. Proceeded as a composer at Moscow State Conservatory with a professor Yuri Kasparov (2010 – 2015). Since October 2015 studies master program in composition with a professor Johannes Schöllhorn in Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln.
Winner of international competitions, such as: Frederic Mompou International Award of the 36th Young composer competition for saxophone quartets in Barcelona, Spain (2015), Third international Competition of Moscow Conservatory for composing a mandatory piece for Winds (2011) etc. Nominee of Gaudeamus Prize 2013 (The Netherlands).
Finalist of the biggest independent national Russian award in contemporary art “Kandinsky Prize” 2014 (with her musical performance “The Mirror of Galadriel”). Scholar of Berlin-Stipendium 2016 of Academy of Arts for 3-months residence in Berlin. Chosen to present Russia during ISCM-World Music Days 2016 in Tongyeong, South Korea. Invited to participate in ECLAT festival in February 2016 with the musical performance “The Mirror of Galadriel”.
Her music is being played in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Finland, Israel, Denmark, Russia.
Elena is a constant participant of international music festivals and courses, such as: WIEN-Modern Festival in Austria (2015), VertixeVIGO festival in Spain (2015), Summer Academy Schloss Solitude with Chaya Czernowin, Ming Tsao and Rebecca Saunders (2015); Summer Academy of Tzlil Meudcan Festival in Israel with Pierluigi Billone, Dimitri Kourliandski and Nikel Ensemble (2015); 47th International Music Festival 2014 in Darmstadt; Impuls Academy (2013, 2015), Donaueschinger Musiktage 2013, Moscow Ensemble Academy Tchaikovsky city (2012, 2013, 2014) and others.
Participant of master-classes with: Franck Bedrossian, Pierluigi Billone, Chaya Czernowin, Beat Furrer, Francesco Filidei, Filippe Leroux, Marc Andre, Klaus Lang, Peter Ablinger, Richard Barrett, Louis Andriessen, Johannes Kreidler,Dmitri Kourliandski, Clemens Gadenstätter, Jean-Luc Hérve, Antoine Beuger, Manon-Liu Winter, Frank Gratkowski, Georg Nussbaumer.
Elena is a quite experimental composer, she works in different areas of music and art: musical performances; pieces for specially built instruments and objects; pieces for found objects; works containing musical theatre elements; works with components of choreography; pieces for non-specified instrumentation; verbal and game-like scores; pieces including analogue devices, prepared instruments; chamber and symphonic music; scores for performers-improvisators etc.
 

Malin Bång’s music is an exploration of movement and energy. She defines her musical material according to their amount of friction to create a spectrum of unpredictable and contrasting actions, ranging from the intimate and barely audible to the harsh and obstinate. In her work she often incorporates acoustic objects to explore a rich sound world and to suggest that a musical content can be shaped by anything valuable to the artistic purpose.
Malin Bång (1974) is residing in Stockholm, Sweden and is the composer in residence and a founding member of the Curious Chamber Players. Her work includes music for instrumental ensembles, orchestra, staged music, electronic music and instrumental performance pieces. Lately she has specifically explored the mixed, amplified instrumental ensemble extended with sound objects in collaboration with the members of Curious Chamber Players.
Her works are performed worldwide and some recent projects and commissions include the portrait concert “how long is now” at Ultraschall Festival 2014 with performances by the CCP, Klangforum Wien and the Impuls festival, Ensemble Recherche and the Wittener Tage für Neue Musik, Ensemble Nikel at the Donaueschinger Musiktage and Nadar Ensemble for the Darmstadt Ferienkurse and Faint Noise at the Huddersfield Festival. During 2010 she was awarded the Kranichsteiner Stipendienpreis for her ensemble work Turbid Motion at the Darmstadt Festival. In 2012 she started a one year residency in Berlin, invited as a guest by the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm.

During 2014 she is preparing and composing music commissioned by the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR for the celebratory concert of Lachenmann’s 80th birthday in 2015, as well as a new work for the national orchestra of Sweden – the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the chamber orchestra Musica Vitae together with Vokalharmonin – the acclaimed vocal ensemble from Stockholm.
Malin Bång has been studying composition at the Academy of Music in Piteå, Universität der Künste i Berlin, the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, the Göteborg University and in several master classes and courses for example Voix Nouvelles at Royaumont, Summer Academy Schloss Solitude, Forum for Young Composers by Ensemble Aleph and Darmstädter Ferienkurse, with teachers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Gérard Grisey, Philippe Manoury, Philippe Capdenat, Chaya Czernowin, Walter Zimmermann, Friedrich Goldmann, Ole Lützow Holm, Pär Lindgren, Jan Sandström and Peter Lyne.