Elena Kats-Chernin
b.4 November 1957, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Biographie
Elena Kats-Chernin is one of the most cosmopolitan composers working today, having reached millions of listeners worldwide through her prolific catalogue of works for theater, ballet, orchestra, and chamber ensemble. Her dramatically vivid music communicates a mixture of lightheartedness and heavy melancholy, combining strong rhythmic figures with elements of cabaret, tango, ragtime, and klezmer.
Born in 1957 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Kats-Chernin received intensive training at the Gnesin Musical College before emigrating to Australia in 1975. She graduated from the New South Wales Conservatory in 1981 and was awarded a DAAD (German academic exchange) grant to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. She remained in Germany for 13 years, returning in 1994 to Australia where she now lives in Sydney.
One of Australia’s leading composers, Elena Kats-Chernin has created works in nearly every genre, from orchestral compositions to chamber, choral, 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, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Present Music, and the North Carolina Symphony. In 2001, she was featured at both Musica Nova Helsinki and the Vale of Glamorgan Festival (Wales).
While in Europe, 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, appearing on a CD of the same title (ABC Classics). The piece 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 string quartet piece Charleston Noir.
Her brilliantly scored, energetic, and often propulsive music has been choreographed by dance-makers around the world. In 2000 she collaborated 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 (Tall Poppies, 2000), as well as Ragtime & Blue (Signum Classics, 2005).
In 2007 Kats-Chernin’s “Eliza Aria” (from Wild Swans) attracted millions of listeners through a high-profile ad campaign by British bank Lloyds TSB entitled “For the Journey…”. The overwhelming demand from fans on websites such as Myspace and YouTube resulted in a reissue of Wild Swans (ABC Classics), a new arrangement of “Eliza Aria” for voice and piano, and a remix of the same by DJ Mark Brown featuring Sarah Cracknell, bringing Kats-Chernin’s music to the top of the iTunes charts.
2009 has proven a busy year for Kats-Chernin. Garden of Dreams, a concerto for didgeridoo and orchestra, received its world premiere in May at the Canberra International Music Festival with soloist William Barton and the Canberra International Chamber Festival Ensemble under the baton of Roland Peelman. Upcoming premieres include Golden Kitsch, for percussion and orchestra, which will premiere on 11 July 2009 with soloist Claire Edwardes and the Sydney Youth Orchestra under the direction of Max McBride, and Redmyre Suite, commissioned by the Strathfield Symphony Orchestra for the occasion of its 40th birthday, which will receive its world premiere on 4 July 2009 under the baton of Sarah-Grace Williams.
Elena Kats-Chernin is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.
June 2009
This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes
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