Chaya Czernowin (Compositora)
Chaya Czernowin was born in 1957 in Israel and studied composition at the Tel Aviv Rubin Academy of Music from 1976 until 1982. Fellowships and studies followed in Berlin (DAAD scholarship 83- 85), the USA (University of California, where she received her Ph.D., 87-93 Yaddo and Macdowell fellowships), Japan (93-95 Asahi Shimbun Fellowship and American National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship), and a year as a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in 1996. During these years she was able to concentrate on forming her musical language and thought. Her main teachers were: Abel Ehrlich, Izhak Sadai, Dieter Schnebel, Eli Yarden, Joan Tower, Brian Ferneyhough and Roger Reynolds.
Czernowin´s chamber and orchestral music has been played by more than sixty festivals all over the world and include commissions by major ensembles, orchestras, and festivals (Ensemble Modern, Arditti quartet, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Intercontemporain, IRCAM, ELISION, Recherche, San Francisco Contemporary Players, ORF Orchestra, Vienna, SWR Baden-Baden Orchestra, and Munich Philharmonic to mention but a few). Characteristic to her work are attempts to find alternative temporalities, changing perspectives and scale, fragmentation, examination and stretching of identity; all are coupled with a strong physical imprint and high emotional intensity.
Czernowin wrote the opera “Pnima…ins Innere” for the Munich Biennale 2000. This work hauntingly treats the difficulty of communicating a traumatic experience, in this case the Jewish holocaust. The work was awarded the Bavarian Theater Prize and was named “Best Premiere of the Year 2000” by the critic´s survey of the magazine Opernwelt. In 2005 and in 2006 Czernowin was composer in residence at the Salzburg Festival, where she was commissioned to supplement Mozart´s opera “Zaïde”. The resulting work “Zaide/Adama, fragments” is a first attempt of its kind to answer an unfinished work with an intervening contemporary “counterpoint work”. “Zaide/Adama, fragments” was broadcast on ARD TV and recorded on Deutsche Gramophone.
Czernowin sees composition teaching as directly connected to her compositional work. She has taught composition at the Yoshiro Irino Institute, JML, Tokyo, Japan and at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music From 1997- 2006 Chaya Czernowin was professor of music composition at the University of California, San Diego. In 2006-2009 she was chosen to be the first female composition professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Beginning September 2009 she will become the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music (composition) at Harvard University. Since 2003 Czernowin has directed the Summer Academy for Composers at the "Akedemie Schloss Solitude", Stuttgart. Guest professorships, presentations and master classes include Tokyo University for the Fine Arts, Yonsei University, Korea, Gothenburg Music Academy, Sweden, Helsinki Sibelius Academy, Finland, Oslo Music Academy, Paris Conservatoire, Graz Music University, Basel Academy, Zurich Hochschule, Stanford University, Columbia University, Yale, Florida State University, Gainesville, Leeds and Brunell Universities, England and many others.
In addition to numerous other prizes, Czernowin represented Israel in the international uncesco composer´s Rostorum in 1981, was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis in Darmstadt Fereinkurse1992. IRCAM reading panel commission in 1998, a few scholarships of the SWR experimental Studio Freiburg 1998/2000/ 2001, ISCM 1995/2001/ Förderpreis of the Ernst-von-Siemens Music Foundation in 2003, the Rockefeller Foundation in 2004, and the Fromm Foundation Award in 2008, and a nomination as a fellow to the Wissenschaftkolleg Berlin in 2008, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. She will be a composer in resident at the Lucern Fetival in 2013.
Her work is recorded by Mode, Naos, Col Legno, Deutsche Gramophone, Wergo Einstein Records and others, and is published by Schott.