Dániel Péter Biró

Dániel Péter Biró

Fellow: Awarded 2017
Field of Study: Music Composition

Competition: US & Canada

Dániel Péter Biró is Professor of Composition at the Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen.

He studied in Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Israel before receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004. His dissertation examines historical relationships between orality, memory and notational development in Hungarian laments, Jewish Torah recitation and early Christian plainchant. In 2011 he was Visiting Professor at Utrecht University where he undertook computational research of Jewish and Islamic chant as practiced in the Netherlands.

Dániel Péter Biró has been commissioned by festivals (Eclat Festival, Darmstadt International Summer Courses, Toronto New Music Concerts, Vancouver New Music) and his music has been performed by ensembles around the world by, among others, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Ensemble Surplus, ensemble aisthesis, Kai Wessel, the Meitar Ensemble, ensemble recherche, the Neue Vocalsolisten, the Talea Ensemble and the Schola Heidelberg. He has won international prizes for his work (Kodály Prize, Gigahertz Production Prize, Vocal Music Competition of the ISCM–Austria). In 2013 his composition Kivrot Hata’avah (Graves of Craving) represented Canada at the World Music Days in Vienna, Austria.

In 2014-2015 he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. During this time he worked on the completion of the composition cycle Mishpatim (Laws) for voices, ensemble and electronics, working in conjunction with the Experimentalstudio: the recording of the cycle will be released by Neos Music in 2017. He is co-editor, with Harald Krebs, of The String Quartets of Béla Bartók: Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2014). In 2015 He was elected to the College of New Scholars, Scientists and Artists of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2016-2017 he was Artist-in-Residence at the University of Victoria Centre for Studies in Religion and Society. His compositions are published by Edition Gravis.

Photograph credit: Linda Sheldon

Video: University of Victoria

Video: Al Ken Kara (That Is Why It Was Called) performed by the Neue Vocalsolisten

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