Ladislav Kubik

Ladislav Kubik

Fellow: Awarded 2010
Field of Study: Music Composition

Competition: US & Canada

Florida State University

Born in Prague, Ladislav Kubík received all of his formal education in music from that city’s renowned Academy of Music. After finishing his master’s programs there (M.M. in composition, 1970; M.M. in music theory,1972), he served as an assistant professor at the Prague Conservatory (1973-76) before returning to the Prague Academy of Music, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1980.

His marked abilities as a composer were evident early on. His first orchestral works, composed when he was 17 and 18, received their premieres at the Dvorak Hall at the Rudolphinum in Prague; his skill as a pianist earned him the top award in a national competition; and he quickly began amassing prizes in composition as well. In 1974 he won first prize in UNESCO’s young composers’ competition; his composition Der Weg claimed top honors in the International Franz Kafka Composition Competition; he placed second both in the World Music contest in Kerkrade, Netherlands, for Symphony for Winds and Percussion and in the New England Chamber Music Competition for Angels and Airplanes; and he was a finalist in the Leonard Bernstein Competition in Jerusalem, having impressed the judges with his Sinfonietta No.2. His successes resulted in his music being performed and aired in over two dozen countries over the course of the 1970s and 1980s.

Always eager to support and encourage other young composers, Mr. Kubík has taught not only at the Prague Conservatory as an assistant professor, but at Charles University (1988-1990) as an associate professor, and since 1991 at Florida State University as a professor of composition in its highly rated music composition program. In keeping with his commitment to music education, in 1994 he established in Prague the Czech-American Summer Music Institute, where he continues to lecture and teach each year.

He has served on juries for some of the most prominent music composition competitions in Europe and the United States, and in 1995 he founded the Ladislav Kubík International Prize in Composition, supported by Florida State University, which has drawn competitors from thirty countries.

Ladislav Kubík is a member of the Society of Composers, American Composers Forum, Music Teachers Natioanl Association, the Association of Czech Musicians and Musicologists, the Society of Czech Composers, and The Presence. He became a United States citizen in 2002.

 

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