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Konstantia Gourzi Awarded Opus Klassik "Composer of the Year" 2023

Oct. 18, 2023

Konstantia Gourzi Awarded Opus Klassik "Composer of the Year" 2023

Universal Edition composer, Konstantia Gourzi has been named "Composer of the Year" 2023 by Opus Klassik, one of Germany's foremost classical music prizes.

Gourzi's career as an esteemed composer and conductor is unusual and extraordinary, influenced by different cultures and musical traditions. Creating connections between these roles constantly inspires her new performance concepts. Gourzi sees "composing and conducting as a whole, as an inseparable relationship".

Konstantia Gourzi's compositions include orchestral works, chamber music and solo pieces, as well as music theater and film music. She has been commissioned to write for renowned musicians and ensembles including the Lucerne Festival, the Grafenegg Festival, the Molyvos Festival, the Berlin State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the hr Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio, the Ensemble Musica Nova Israel, the Ensemble New Music Moscow, the Athens State Orchestra, the Nuremberg Philharmonic, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the ARD Music Competition.

In Konstantia Gourzi's music, there is an inner glow and a great dramatic power that comes from stillness and centering. For her compositions, Gourzi chooses timeless themes and extra-musical content that are precisely calculated in their proportions of form and time. Her music is connected with the desire to create a sound space in which the listener is given the freedom to perceive themselves within the space.

Always on the lookout for new performance concepts for contemporary music, Konstantia Gourzi has founded and directed various ensembles, beginning with the ensemble attacca berlin and the ensemble echo. After teaching at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin, Gourzi was appointed Professor for Ensemble Direction of New Music at the Munich University of Music and Theatre in 2002. There, she founded the ensemble oktopus for modern music. This was followed by the network and ensemble opus21musikplus with the aim of expanding new music together with other art forms, and musical genres across borders.

Gourzi's artistic path has been documented in diverse radio and television broadcasts and livestreams, as well as in recordings on NEOS, NAXOS, Sony Classical and ECM. The portrait CDs Anájikon (ECM, 2021) and Whispers (SONY Classical, 2022) were nominated for the "Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik" and "International Classical Music Awards". Notably, Whispers received over 13 million views on music streaming platforms in one year following the album's release.

Konstantia Gourzi was born in Athens and studied piano, composition and conducting in her hometown and at the HdK (UdK) Berlin from 1988 to 1992. She lives in Munich.

To learn more about Konstantia Gourzi, visit universaledition.com

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