Musicatlas
News for Ptaszynska
- Prestigious American award for Ptaszynska
[posted 24 April 2006]Polish composer Marta Ptaszynska has been honoured with the prestigious Benjamin H. Danks Creative Music Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This was done with a special distinction for her operas and oratoria. [Source: http://www.polskieradio.pl/]
Music
Wide variety of forms. Holocaust Memorial Cantata, for soloists, chorus & orchestra (CD, Feb2001, Yehudi Menuhin) but also Two Poems for tuba (1975): Haunting pieces, unusual color effects, including multi-phonics with voice below and above the tuba note! See Presser website for full listing, discography, reviews.
Life
Studied at Poznan’s Academy of Music, also privately with Witold Lutoslawski, who later became her mentor. In 1968, she received 3 Master of Arts Degrees with distinction in composition, music theory, and percussion. Early 70s, study in Paris with Boulanger and Messiaen, and the ORTF Center (electronic music).
Moved to the U.S.A. in 1972. In 1974 she earned an Artist Diploma Degree under a grant from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a scholarship from the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York. At the Cleveland Institute she studied with Cloyd Duff, Richard Weiner and Donald Erb.
Taught at many U.S. institutions, most recently: 1994 and 1996, Northwestern University (composition and analysis of twentieth-century music), 1995, composer-in-residence at the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati; 1997, visiting professor at the University of Chicago, then Professor of Composition at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Since 1998, University of Chicago.
(Contributed by David Payne <henry87
earthlink.net>.)