 Sun 8.15 Heaven is Closed
ELENA KATS-CHERNIN (b. 1957)
Elena Kats-Chernin's music moves between lightheartedness and heavy melancholy, combining strong rhythmic figures and occasional repetitive ostinato with long melodies and elements of cabaret, tango, ragtime and a hint of klezmer.
Born in 1957 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Kats-Chernin received intensive training at the Gnesin Musical College before emigrating to Australia in 1975. She graduated from the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in 1980 and was awarded a DAAD (German academic exchange) grant to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. She remained in Germany for 13 years, returning in 1994 to Australia where she now lives in Sydney.
One of Australia’s leading composers, Elena Kats-Chernin has created works in nearly every genre, from orchestral compositions to chamber, choral, and stage works. Among her many commissions are pieces for Evelyn Glennie, Michael Collins, Ensemble Modern, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Sequitur, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Present Music, and the North Carolina Symphony. In 2001, she was featured at both Musica Nova Helsinki and the Vale of Glamorgan Festival (Wales). In 2008 she was a guest at Other Minds 13 festival and had works performed by Lisa Moore and Del Sol String Quartet there.
While in Europe, Kats-Chernin composed Clocks (1993) for ensemble and pre-recorded tape. Premiered by the Ensemble Modern, it was an artistic breakthrough for the composer, earning her widespread attention and praise. Clocks has since been performed in Europe, Australia, and the USA, appearing on a CD of the same title (ABC Classics). The piece also formed the basis for a prize-winning animated film by German filmmaker Kirsten Winter. In 1996 Kats-Chernin’s piece Cadences, Deviations and Scarlatti won the Sounds Australian Award; in the same year she was also awarded the Peggy Glanville Hicks Fellowship and the Jean Bogan Memorial Prize for her piece Charleston Noir.
Her brilliantly scored, energetic, and often propulsive music has been choreographed by dance-makers around the world. In 2000 she collaborated with leading Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard in a series of large-scale dance works. The first of these, Deep Sea Dreaming, was broadcast to an audience of millions worldwide as part of the opening ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. In 2003 Kats-Chernin and Tankard created Wild Swans, an evening-length ballet on the Hans Christian Andersen story, commissioned by Australian Ballet. The score for this ballet won her the prestigious Helpmann Award in 2004. Other companies setting ballets to her scores include Nederlands Dans Theater, Munich Ballet Theater, and the Stuttgart Ballet. She has also composed four chamber operas: Iphis, Matricide and Undertow—works that combine wit with mordant social commentary.
In 2000-01 Vitalia's Steps was given its premiere by Emanuel Ax (piano), Evelyn Glennie (percussion), and Margaret Leng-Tan (toy piano), as well as two piano concertos: Displaced Dances and Piano Concerto No. 2. Kats-Chernin has written more than a dozen piano rags, some of which can be heard on Purple, Black & Blues, an all-Kats-Chernin disc performed by pianist Lisa Moore of the Bang on a Can All-Stars (Tall Poppies, 2000), as well as Ragtime & Blue (Signum Classics, 2005). In 2007 Kats-Chernin’s Eliza Aria (from Wild Swans) attracted millions of listeners through a high-profile ad campaign by British bank Lloyds TSB. The overwhelming demand from fans on websites such as Myspace and YouTube resulted in a reissue of Wild Swans (ABC Classics), a series of arrangements of Eliza Aria for voice and piano, for piano solo, for violin and piano, for string quartet, for clarinet quartet and for several diverse chamber combinations. A remix of the same by DJ Mark Brown featuring Sarah Cracknell, brought Kats-Chernin's music to the top of the UK iTunes charts.
In 2009 Garden of Dreams, a concerto for didgeridoo and orchestra, received its world premiere at the Canberra International Music Festival with soloist William Barton and the Canberra International Chamber Festival Ensemble under the baton of Roland Peelman. Golden Kitsch for percussion and orchestra received its highly successful premiere in 2009 with the soloist Claire Edwardes and the Sydney Youth Orchestra under the direction of Max McBride. Also in 2009, Redmyre Suite, commissioned by the Strathfield Symphony Orchestra for the occasion of its 40th anniversary, was premiered under the baton of Sarah-Grace Williams. Kats-Chernin’s Russian Rag was featured in the 2009 claymation film titled Mary and Max by Oscar winning Australian director Adam Elliot. She has recently completed writing her first European commission for a chamber opera, Rage of Life, to a libretto (in English) by a renowned author Igor Bauersima, for a premiere at the Antwerp Flanders Opera in April 2010. It is a co-production with the Staatsoper Stuttgart.
Her next compositions are a song cycle for tenor and piano, as well as a double concerto for violin, piano and orchestra.
Elena Kats-Chernin is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.
June 2009 |
