June in Buffalo was proud to have the Buffalo Philharmonic join us at recent festivals, most recently conducted by Fernanda Lastra in the Festival's first program comprised entirely of works by female composers. On the occasion of her BPO swan song, Ms. Lastra was interviewed by a local culture magazine. From the magazine:
Lastra also supports contemporary classical music composers through continued involvement with the internationally acclaimed University at Buffalo's June in Buffalo Festival, where she has made some of the most challenging music accessible to concert-goers: "It has been a unique experience working alongside remarkable living composers at the June in Buffalo Music Festival. Collaborating directly with composers is not only fascinating but also enriching. It provides conductors real-time interactions with composers and insights that deepen our understanding of the music-making process. Moreover, the pieces highlighted in this festival often push the boundaries of music and creativity, challenging both musicians, myself as a conductor, and the audience to explore new sounds and artistic expressions that are at the forefront of contemporary classical music."
We are thrilled to that Karola Obermüller will be joining us for a second consecutive year at June in Buffalo.
Karola Obermüller composes in search of the unknown, with layers upon
layers of obscured material buried deep beneath a surface that is
sometimes sumptuous, sometimes bristling with rhythmic energy. Her
unique voice began forming in collages of sound made with tape recorders
as a child and evolved later with composition degrees from the
Meistersinger-Konservatorium Nürnberg, the Hochschule für Musik Saar,
and the University Mozarteum Salzburg. Her sense of rhythm and form was
forever changed by studying Carnatic and Hindustani classical music in
Chennai and Delhi, India.
A Ph.D. at Harvard University brought her to the US where she taught
at Wellesley College and at the University of New Mexico, co-directing
the composition area and the annual John Donald Robb Composers’
Symposium music festival, before joining the Department of Music at UC
San Diego. She also lives and works part of the year in Europe and has
been a visiting artist at ZKM, Deutsche Akademie Rom, Centro Tedesco di
studi Veneziani, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Leipzig Gewandhaus and Hanns
Eisler House, and IRCAM as well as serving as a resident composer for
new music festivals at Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg, Conservatorio
Piccinni di Bari (Italy), University Mozarteum Salzburg, Festival
Virtuosi Century XXI, Recife (Brazil), Samobor Music Festival Croatia,
and others. Obermüller frequently serves as an adjudicator for
competitions such as the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Hochschulwettbewerb, the Femfestival, and the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis
of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse.
reflejos distantes - Recorded at June in Buffalo 2024
Her music, often political, always dramatic, includes operas for
Staatstheater Nürnberg, Theater Bielefeld, Theater Bonn, Theater
Heidelberg, and Stuttgart’s Musik der Jahrhunderte. The emotional
juxtapositions of story suspended in a tableau architecture that one
finds in her operas can be heard in her concert works as well which
include commissions from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, New Music
USA, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Saarländischer Rundfunk, and numerous
renowned soloists and ensembles.
Obermüller works with lauded contemporary music ensembles such as
Ensemble Modern, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), Arditti
Quartet, Neue Vocalsolisten, Ekmeles, MusikFabrik, Le Nouvel Ensemble
Moderne, E-MEX Ensemble, Iridium Quartet, New Thread Quartet, Soli fan
tutti, Pegnitzschäfer Klangkonzepte, Ensemble Adapter, New Mexico
Contemporary Ensemble, ensemble phorminx, sonic.art saxophone quartet,
Splinter Reeds, Gewandhaus-Ensemble Avantgarde, and AsianArt Ensemble.
She has received numerous awards including the Heidelberger
Künstlerinnenpreis, Darmstädter Musikpreis, the New York Musicians Club
Prize, the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award, the Bavarian Youth
Prize for Composition (awarded by Zubin Mehta), the John Green Prize
for Excellence in Music Composition, and the 1st Prize of the “New Note”
International Composers Competition Croatia.
Recordings of several of Obermüller’s works have been released on CD
including Jacqueline Leclair’s solo CD (New Focus Recordings, Music for
English Horn Alone, FCR272), a record by harpsichordist Luca Quintavalle
(Brilliant Classics 96476: Mousikē—the art of the muses), a CD with
the Voices of the Pearl project (Volume 3), and a disk by Duo Harmonium
d’art et Pianoforte (forthcoming on dreyer-gaido). Having been selected
by the German Music Council to be a part of the Contemporary Music
Edition, the first portrait CD of her music was released by WERGO in
2018 and a second CD is forthcoming on New Focus Recordings.
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