Chaya Czernowin

Title: Slow Summer Stay II (lakes)
Commission: 2008
Completed: 2013
Instrumentation: clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon, guitar, piano, percussion, viola, cello
Premiere Location: Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
Premiere Ensemble: San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
Notes:

Chaya Czernowin was born and brought up in Israel. After her studies in Israel, at the age of 25, she continued studying in Germany (DAAD grant), the US, and then was invited to live in Japan (Asahi Shimbun Fellowship and American NEA grant) Tokyo, in Germany (a fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude) and in Vienna. Her music has been performed throughout the world, by some of the best orchestras and performers of new music, and she has held a professorship at UCSD, and was the first woman to be appointed as a composition professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria (2006–2009), and at Harvard University, USA (2009 and on) where she has been the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music. Together with Jean-Baptiste Jolly, the director of Akademie Schloss Solitude near Stuttgart and with composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi, she has founded the summer Academy at Schloss Solitude, a biannual course for composers, 2003–2019. Takasugi and Czernowin also taught at Tzlil Meudcan, an international course based in Israel founded by Yaron Deutsch of Ensemble Nikel. Czernowin is an Israeli/ American Citizen.

Czernowin’s output includes chamber and orchestral music, with and without electronics. Her works were played in most of the significant new music festival in Europe and also in Japan Korea, Australia, US and Canada. She composed four large scale works for the stage: Pnima...ins Innere (2000, Munich Biennale) chosen to be the best premiere of the year by Opernwelt yearly critic survey, Adama (2004/5) with Mozart's Zaide (Salzburg Festival 2006). Adama has a second version written with Ludger Engles, with an added choir which was presented in Freiburg Stadttheater (2017). The opera Infinite Now was written in 2017 a commission of Vlaamse Opera Belgium, IRCAM paris and Mannheim Stadtheater. The piece, combines/ superimposes materials of the first world war (Luk Perceval theater piece “FRONT”) with the short story Homecoming by Can Xue. Also this opera was chosen as the premier of the year in the international critics survey of Opernwelt. In 2020 Czernowin Wrote the text and music to Heart Chamber which was premiered and commissioned by the Deutsche Opere Berlin, in the direction of Claus Guth to a strong critical and public acclaim. Czernowin was appointed Artist in residence at the Salzburg Festival in 2005/6 and at the Lucern Festival, Switzerland in 2013, and at Huddersfield Festival 2021. During the Lockdown of the 2020 Pandemic Czernowin started studying electronic music with Hans Tutschku.