elena kats-chernin
music
Elena Kats-Chernin was born in Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, former USSR, in 1957. Her studies, begun at the Yaroslavl Music School, continued after matriculation at age 14 at the selective Gnesin Musical College in Moscow. In 1975 she migrated with her family to Australia where she studied composition with Richard Toop at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. While a student she received several prizes. Granted a German (DAAD) scholarship, she studied with Helmut Lachenmann in Hannover and Stuttgart in 1980-1982. Kats-Chernin remained in Europe for over a decade. She became active as a composer for Reinhild Hoffmann's dance theatre as well as incidental music for drama at the State Theatres in Berlin (Schaubuhne),Vienna (Burgtheatre), Bochum and Hamburg. Elena returned to live in Sydney, Australia in 1994, and is now one of the country's leading composers.
Prior to returning to Australia, Kats-Chernin composed Clocks (1993) for ensemble and pre-recorded tape. Premiered by the Ensemble Modern, it was an artistic breakthrough for the composer, earning her widespread attention and praise. Clocks has since been performed in Europe, Australia, and the USA; it appears on a CD of the same title on the ABC Classics label. It also formed the basis for a prize-winning animated film by German filmmaker Kirsten Winter. In 1996 Kats-Chernin's piece Cadences, Deviations and Scarlatti won the Sounds Australian Award; in the same year she was also awarded the Peggy Glanville Hicks Fellowship and the Jean Bogan Memorial Prize for the piano piece Charleston Noir.
Elena Kats-Chernin has created works in nearly every genre, from orchestral compositions to chamber, choral, ensemble, and stage works. Among her many commissions are pieces for Evelyn Glennie, Ensemble Modern, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Sequitur, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In 2001, she was featured at both Musica Nova Helsinki and the Vale of Glamorgan Festival (Wales).
Her brilliantly scored, energetic, and often propulsive music has been choreographed by dance makers around the world. Recently she began to collaborate with leading Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard in a series of large-scale dance works. The first of these, Deep Sea Dreaming, was broadcast to an audience of millions worldwide as 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, and the Stuttgart Ballet. She has also composed four chamber operas: Iphis, Matricide, Mr. Barbeque, and Undertow -- works that combine wit with mordant social commentary.
Kats-Chernin is a gifted pianist, and the instrument figures prominently in her output. The 2000-01 season saw the premiere of Vitalia's Steps, given its premiere by Emanuel Ax (piano), Evelyn Glennie (percussion), and Margaret Leng-Tan (toy piano), as well as two piano concertos: Displaced Dances and Piano Concerto No. 2. In addition, she has written more than a dozen piano rags. Some of these can be heard on Purple, Black, and Blues, an all-Kats-Chernin disc performed by pianist Lisa Moore of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, released in 2000 on the Tall Poppies label.
Elena Kats-Chernin is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.
