ACADÉMIE ACADÉMI ACADÉM ACADÉ ACAD ACA AC A LIST OF PARTICIPANTS BIOGRAPHIES OPERA CREATION WORKSHOP JUNE 22 — 26, 2020 OPERA CREATION WORKSHOP The Académie du Festival d’Aix has adapted and developed new online training programs in order to continue to carry out its mission of training and accompanying young musicians in their professional development. Country borders currently pose a challenge to an artist’s mobility and so it becomes important to create new work spaces and meeting places which allow for the preservation of the vital links and intercultural dialogue at the heart of these programs. The training programs were created through a process of reflection and ongoing exchange with the artists and pedagogical experts who were initially involved in training sessions that were scheduled to take place in Aix during the 2020 edition of the Festival d’Aix. Through these newly adapted programs, the Académie du Festival d’Aix continues to defend its values which include artistic excellence, innovation, the expression of cultural diversity, and activities which promote social inclusion. MENTOR PARTICIPANTS Offered for several years to young creators from all disciplines, the Opera Creation Workshop is a place for reflection and discussion on artistic opera-related issues. WRITER ZSUZSANNA ARDÓ This workshop usually seeks to define, discuss current values of opera and the AMIN MAALOUF — PLAYWRIGHT, VISUAL ARTS CREATOR tasks it will assume in the future and reflects on opera creation today and on the CHRISTINA ATHINODOROU multidisciplinary aspects that it encompasses. This year, the workshop will take — COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR place entirely online over a period of five days and will encourage discussions that DAHAE BOO reflect on the sanitary crisis that we are all facing at the moment. The discussions — COMPOSER will be fueled by the interventions of the stage directors Peter Sellers and Simon TOM CREED McBurney and Professor Didier Sicard who have been invited to speak during — STAGE DIRECTOR the workshop. The workshop itself will be led by the Franco-Lebanese writer Amin PENDA DIOUF Maalouf – elected to the Académie française in 2011. – PLAYWRIGHT LOUIS GOLDFORD This workshop is supported by SACD. — COMPOSER STACY HARDY — PLAYWRIGHT MAURO HERTIG — COMPOSER GOLFAM KHAYAM — COMPOSER MICHAEL KLEINE — STAGE DIRECTOR, SCENOGRAPHER, COSTUME DESIGNER NANINE LINNING — STAGE DIRECTOR, CHOREOGRAPHER GARETH MATTEY — PLAYWRIGHT MATTHEW RICKETTS — COMPOSER CLAIRE TIPY — PLAYWRIGHT, STAGE DIRECTOR 3 MENTOR PARTICIPANT AMIN MAALOUF ZSUZSANNA ARDÓ PLAYWRIGHT, VISUAL WRITER ARTS CREATOR FRANCE / LEBANON HUNGARY Zsuzsanna Ardó is an award-winning visual artist, curator and writer. Her work received awards and artist residencies by Arts Council England, High Arctic Expedition, ASL NY, Frankfurter Kunstverein, UNESCO, Skopje City and Museum and the Festival d’Aix. She has been invited to serve as chair and member of international juries, and curated international Amin Maalouf was born in Beirut in 1949. He studied economics and sociology and then projects for both mainstream and alternative spaces e.g. in Antarctica, the Arctic, the worked as an international reporter until the Lebanon war broke out in 1975. He settled in British and European Parliament and the European Commission. She was jury-selected to Paris in 1976 with his family and became editor in chief for the newspaper Jeune Afrique. represent the United Kingdom in UNESCO’s creative residency in 2018, with works created In 1983, he published his first book, an essay entitled The Crusades through Arab Eyes and featured in 2019 at UNESCO headquarter in Paris. resigned from his position as a journalist in 1986 to devote himself to his second book and As a writer and visual artist she works across disciplines, genres, languages and cultures. first novel, Leo the African, which received an important critical and public praise when Her visual art includes painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, film, and 3D works. it was published. Highly acclaimed books followed, until 1993 when The Rock of Tanios, Her visual language investigates the crossovers between the figurative and abstract, his fourth novel, won the Goncourt Prize. He has written many other works, all set in the human and animal, natural and unnatural; it explores the ambivalent edges between Middle-East, Africa and the Mediterranean world, among which novels such as Ports of observation and imagination, memory, mystery and mythology. Her climate change Call, Balthasar’s Odyssey, Samarkand or The Disoriented. He also published essays such inspired land art installations started in the High Arctic, popping up and engaging locals as In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, Disordered World: Setting a New wherever she goes since then. In England this work continues to take her along vulnerable Course for the Twenty-first Century, Un fauteuil sur la Seine, and opera libretti: L’Amour de coastlines and areas be it by the Irish, Celtic and the North Sea, the English and the loin and Adriana Mater. Le Naufrage des civilisations is his latest published work. He was Bristol Channel, a lighthouse embraced by the sea or an Elizabethan Hall on glaciated granted the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2010. In June 2011, he was elected to Jurassic and Cretaceous land. The Glacier Strikes Back, her fine art print based on her th join the Académie Française. land art installations was jury-selected for the 7 International Print Biennale Shortlist at the National Museum in Guanlan, China, dedicated to the art printmaking. Her work has been published internationally e.g. Philosophy Now, The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, Logos, OUP, Macmillan, and her satirical social anthropology book about her native culture was published in three editions on three continents. Her short film, Allegro Barbaro, a triple- flashback visual poem, was screened at the India International Centre Delhi, Harvard in Boston, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. She has curated international projects on a variety of relevant themes, including climate change, slavery, feminism. Her large-scale solo exhibition about the language of film featured at the headquarter of the British Film Academy. She wrote and directed The Hat: Arendt Meets Heidegger, her play for the Harvard short play festival. She adapted her play as a libretto for opera, which premiered in New York, and the staged version in Chicago, featuring her art work inspired by the zeitgeist of the opera. Collaborating on creative projects with scientists and composers act as creative catalyst in her practice. Her poems, set to music by composers, are registered with BMI and performed internationally. For years she served as a voting member of Writing Chapter of the British Film Academy Awards. She is a member of ICOM. www.ardo.org 4 5 PARTICIPANT PARTICIPANT CHRISTINA ATHINODOROU DAHAE BOO COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR COMPOSER CYPRUS SOUTH KOREA Christina Athinodorou (born 1981, Paphos) is a composer increasingly rising into Born in 1988 in South Korea, Dahae Boo has a lot of experience in various countries: prominence, with a growing catalogue of symphonic, chamber and vocal works. South Korea (Seoul National University), France (Conservatoire de Boulogne-Billancourt, She studied composition with Julian Philips and conducting with Alan Hazeldine at Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris), Germany the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and later she studied composition (Hochschule für Musik Stuttgart, Hochschule für Musik Freiburg), Japan (Tokyo privately with Philippe Leroux in Paris. She also took courses at the UNT, the University, Kunitachi Music College). During the 2016-2017 academic years, she studied Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon and Ircam. She is composition and computer music at Ircam. Her music has been performed by Ensemble based in Cyprus and works internationally, while maintaining her strong bonds with Intercontemporain, Divertimiento Ensemble, Berliner Ensemble Essenz, Prometeo both the United Kingdom and France. Quartet, Béla Quartet, Mivos Quartet and Debussy Quartet among others. In 2017, she did Her music suggests her preoccupation with musical pacing and the harmony of a residency as a composer at the Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2019, movement. It is also informed by contemporary approaches to timbre, extended she get Sacem and Fondation Salabert prizes. techniques, and almost inevitably by the rich Mediterranean and Hellenic traditions, including drama, prosody and microtonality. Her compositions have been performed www.dahaeboo.net worldwide (Venice Biennale, Grafenegg Festival, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Music Biennale Zagreb, Musikprotokoll Graz, ISCM World New Music Days) by the Tonkünstler Orchester, the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, the Athens State Orchestra Ensemble Aleph, the Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Reconsil, Ensemble BlauerReiter and Sentieri Selvaggi to name a few. She also appears as a conductor and has collaborated with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto, the Jyväskylä Sinfonia Finlandia, the Nederlands Symfonieorkest, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, the Manchester Camerata, the Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta among others. She has also directed new music with the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Southampton University Winds, the dissonArt Ensemble and the Ensemble Cyclamen. www.athinodorou.com