Sat 8.6 Re-Collecting ASTORoids

ELENA KATS-CHERNIN (b. 1957)

Elena Kats-Chernin trained at the Gnessin Musical College in Moscow before emigrating to Australia in 1975. She graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1980 and was awarded a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. She remained in Germany for 13 years, returning in January 1994 to Sydney. Elena Kats-Chernin has created works in nearly every genre, from orchestral compositions to chamber, choral, and stage works. In late 90's she composed soundtracks to 3 silent films for ZDF/arte. Since 2000 she has collaborated with Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard in a series of large-scale dance works. The first of these, Deep Sea Dreaming, was 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. Other companies setting ballets to her scores include Nederlands Dans Theater, Munich Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet. She has also composed four chamber operas: Iphis, Matricide, Undertow and, most recently, The Rage of Life (co-commissioned by Vlaamse Opera and Stuttgart Opera). In 2007 Kats-Chernin’s Eliza Aria for soprano and orchestra (from Wild Swans) attracted so many listeners through an ad campaign by British bank LloydsTSB that it resulted in a reissue of Wild Swans (ABC Classics), plus a series of arrangements of Eliza Aria for voice and piano, for piano solo, for violin and piano, for string quartet, for clarinet quartet, for piccolo and string quartet as well as a purely orchestral version. In 2008 she was a guest at San Francisco’s Other Minds 13 festival and had works performed by Lisa Moore and Del Sol String Quartet there. This past April, her double concerto in two movements for violin, piano and orchestra Selenite City was premiered in London and An orchestra version of her chamber piece Village Idiot was premiered by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra where she is resident composer. Elena Kats-Chernin returns to Cabrillo following the success of Heaven is Closed in 2010 for the U.S. premiere of Re-Collecting ASTORoids on August 6, 2011.

Elena Kats-Chernin is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

June 2009