Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Samy Moussa & Daniel Kidane

Not long ago, via Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc blog on Arts Journal, I saw mention of two young art music composers I'd never heard of before, Samy Moussa (b. 1984-) and Daniel Kidane (b. 1986-).

Samy Moussa
Moussa is a native of Montreal, Canada, and studied at the University of Montréal, in the Czech Republic, and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, as well as with major contemporary composers including Magnus Lindberg, Salvatore Sciarrino, Pascal Dusaupin, Peter Eötvös, Matthias Pintscher, and the maestro Pierre Boulez. He has collaborated with a number of Canadian and European orchestras and ensembles, and composed two operas as well as a number of chamber works. In 2010 he became Music Director of the INDEX Ensemble in Munich.  In 2012 he received the Bayerischen Kunstförderpreis for his conducting with the INDEX Ensemble and this year won the Composers’ Prize 2013 from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. I saw his name mentioned in conjunction with the Lucerne Festival, at which Pierre Boulez commissioned a new orchestral work from him, to premiere in 2015.

Here's a short piece from the Ernst von Siemens foundation on Moussa, whom it calls "the hedonistic composer." (?)

Here are some videos of Moussa's work:


Ernst von Siemens Foundation clip on Moussa


Moussa's "Kammerkonzert"


Moussa's "Cyclus for Orchestra," (2007) performed by the National Youth Orchestra of Canada

Daniel Kidane

Kidane is British, studied at composition at the Royal College of Music Junior Department, followed by the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, after which he attended the Royal Northern College of Music, receiving a BMus (Hons) and a Masters. Several British orchestras have premiered his works. The Manchester Camerata selected his piece "Feuersturm," a musical evocation of the 1945 bombing of Dresden, Germany, for its 2010 season. This year the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Leverhulme Young Composers' program selected him for a 2014 orchestral premiere.

Kidane has a Myspace page featuring a few of his compositions, most of them from 2008 and 2009, when he had just finished his undergraduate studies.

Here are a few of Kidane's compositions, a number of which are available on Soundcloud.


Daniel Kidane's "Temporal Decay," courtesy of the London Chamber Orchestra

Kidane's "Piano Trios" (including "Flux and Stasis" and "Carceri"
Kidane's "Metamorphosis for solo cello"

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