SERGIO CERVETTI, a Uruguayan-born American composer, came to the United States in 1962 to study composition. In 1966, he attracted international attention after winning the chamber music prize at the Caracas Venezuela Music Festival. After graduating from Peabody Conservatory in 1967, where he studied with Ernst Krenek and Stefan Grové, he was invited by the DAAD to be composer-in-residence in Berlin Germany in 1969-70. From 1972 to 1997 and 2007-08, Cervetti was professor of music at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts.
With a distinguished career and extensive body of work, Cervetti remains invested in composition as an intimate medium of communication and gives each piece a complex, personal voice. He has composed over 150 works for orchestra, chamber music, song cycles, choral, solo instruments, and opera that range from acoustic to electronic, and his works are a post-modern synthesis of techniques from European tradition, folk elements, and minimalist aesthetics. They reflect his interest in literature, painting, dance, and socio-political topics as well as his rich South American heritage. Contributions to the early minimalist movement, available on previous Navona releases, are Guitar Music (the bottom of the iceberg), Madrigal III, …from the earth…, Concerto for Trumpet, Strings and Timpani, and Candombe for Harpsichord. Three Next Wave Festivals at the Brooklyn Academy of Music featured his collaborations with New York City’s dance world. The Alicante Festival in Spain commissioned the harpsichord concerto Las Indias Olvidadas. The opera Elegy For A Prince was premiered in excerpted scenes by New York City Opera/VOX 2007. Career highlights also include tours in Spain with JONDE, the National Youth Orchestra of Spain, and sections of The Hay Wain, an electroacoustic tone-poem, are heard in Oliver Stone’s film Natural Born Killers.
Sergio Cervetti’s work is available at The Arthur Friedheim Library and Archives at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, and the New York Public Library.
Video documentation of Sergio Cervetti’s music and dance collaborations is archived at the New York Public Library’s Dance Collection/Dance Theater Workshop Permanent Archives, the BAM/Next Wave Video Archive for Contemporary Performing Arts, and the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute of Ohio State University.
Photo: Pirjo-Leena Bauer
PETR VRONSKÝ
Earlier on a very successful young violinist (Beethoven's Hradec competition 1964), Petr began his conducting career in 1971 at the Plzeň Opera, from where he moved to Ústí nad Labem as head of the opera company there. His musical development was greatly influenced by his successes in conducting competitions in Olomouc (1970), Besançon in France (1971) and in the Herbert von Karajan competition in Berlin (1973).
In 1978 Petr Vronský was appointed conductor of the State Brno Philharmonic and, during the years 1983-1991, he was its Chief Conductor. He took this orchestra on tour to many countries in Europe, in the United States and Japan. While he was working in Brno he also taught at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts. In the years 2002-2005 he was Chief Conductor of the Janáček ́s Philharmonic Ostrava, with whom he also travelled extensively on tour (Taiwan, Japan, Spain, Austria, Germany, Poland etc.). He has been Honorary Chief Conductor of the Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc since the 2005- 2006 season, and he lectures on conducting at Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
Petr Vronský is regularly invited to conduct leading world orchestras (Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Antwerp, the Berlin Symphony, Istanbul Devlet Senfoni Orkestras, Tokyo's Metropolitan Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra in Rio de Janeiro, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic). He also works with the top orchestras in this country (Czech Philharmonic, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Symphony Orchestra) and with opera theatres at home (Prague's National Theatre, the State Opera in Prague, the Janáček Opera in Brno, J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň) and abroad (Viennese Chamber Opera, Netherlands Dance Theatre in the Hague).
His repertoire comprises over two hundred symphonic and operatic works. He is regarded as a versatile conductor with a broad scope, and an exceptional disposition and sensitivity for musical interpretation. Vronský's discography is also fascinating, wide-ranging and highly acclaimed by the critics.
The MORAVIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA is at present one of the leading symphony orchestras in the Czech Republic. It has played successfully in the concert halls of many European countries. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in May 1945 as the first symphony orchestra outside Prague. It was led by Professor Frantisek Stupka, one of the magnificent conductors of that time. During the nearly 50 years of its existence it has covered an extremely wide repertoire that includes all large orchestral and vocal compositions of all stylistic periods. It has performed more than 200 new works of contemporary composers.
The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra Olomouc has toured many countries, such as Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Switzerland and former Eastern countries. In the last two years it gave 46 guest performances, together with many European conductors, soloists and choirs, in 37 European countries, mainly in Germany, France, Switzerland, Holland, Spain and Austria. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra played in "Salle de Pleyel" and "Théatre des Champs Elyseés" in Paris, it was also invited to participate in the Jacques Martin IV programme. In the Munich Olympia halle it accompanied the world-known soloists José Carreras and Agnes Baltsa. It also performed Carmina Burana by Carl Orff together with 700 singers in Eindhoven, Holland in front of an audience of 30,000 people as well as recorded for the radio station Deutsche Welle in Cologne. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra Olomouc organises each year "Olomouc Music Spring" and "International Organ Festival" and helps to organise "The International Conductor's Courses", in which young conductors from all over the world participate.
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