The conversation presents itself there in the most varied forms: dramatic heat and bitter irony, philosophy and contemplation, dispute and reflexion, conversation in half-voices and shout, conversation at the top of the voice and whisper and many other qualities as well. So, musicians carry out theatrical performance during the course of their concert playing.

The major creative impulse for me is an interesting art idea. Each of my composition leads the life in the special world, developing under special laws, which are peculiar for its only. I always aspire, that the listeners, “travelling” on this world of sounds, constantly would open for themselves something wonderful, important, unusual…

Now I am especially involved with experiments in the field of the musical time and space: the multidimensional organization of musical material, searches of the unique palette of timbres and rhythmic structures

Was born in Ekaterinburg (1984). Graduated from the Ekaterinburg Musical College, where she studied “composition” and “theory of music” in 2003. Graduated from the Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Composition Department) in 2008. Now she continues her music training as a post-graduate student of the Moscow Conservatory under Y. S. Kasparov.

Katya Kulkova is a laureate of international and all-Russia composer’s competitions, including the International Composer’s Competition Choir and Organ (Great Britain, Birmingham, 2009, I Prize), the Third Open Siberian A. Murov competition for young composers (Novosibirsk, 2003, II Prize), the First South Ural Open S. Prokofiev competition for young composers (Chelyabinsk, 2002, III Prize). Her piece Incognito for solo tenor trombone got the First prize in the International Composer’s Competition meeting the First International Competition of Moscow Conservatory for Performers on Woodwind, Brass and Percussion Instruments (Moscow, 2009). And this piece was an obligate work for the second round of the Trombonists’ Competition.

Katya regularly takes part at the International music festivals, including the Moscow International Music Festival Games without words (Moscow, 2007) and Moscow Autumn (2009). Within all five years of training in the Moscow Conservatory she often took part at the Composer’s concerts as both the author and the performer (piano, organ).

Kulkova is a member of Composer’s Union of Russia since 2009.

• Signs of Eternity, symphony for large symphony orchestra
• Echo of voices through time, chamber symphony № 1 for 13 performers
• Cloud–Bird, chamber symphony № 2 for 8 performers
• Music for string orchestra
• Two string quartets
• Edges of talk for flute, cello and piano
• Sonata for cello and piano
• Sun of the Sleepless, a series of romances on the words by V. Nabokov for mezzo-soprano and piano
• Three choirs on the words by I. Bunin
• Chess – a Play with Whites and Blacks for solo piano
• Stalactites for solo organ
• Incognito for solo tenor trombone
• Beyond the Horizon for solo flute

The «garden of butterflies»composition is built from many «butterflies» — a one-day composed-improvised pieces, that became one of composer’s blog post type. The composition is a 42-minute long electro-acoustic composition and the division in parts is made only for better listening experience.

May 3, 2005. 18:05 [from composer's blog]

Patchwork music. The new composition technique

[...] Sometime i wondered about the thing where the art starts, where it is being born and what it consists of. And I made a conclusion that art can be made with everything and it appears literally from nothing. You can make c movie art from any pictures – the material is moving, a child is shaking hands, a man sitting near the window, the snow falls, the man drives somewhere. You can force all that to any direction and you just need to know the destination point. Or this is not necessary also as the film itself can spontaneously create a result. How the movie is being made? Someone takes camera and records episodes that will be edited later, mix sounds, effects, music. You can do anything you like with the frames.

Now we take a sound recorder in our hands and use it the same way the director/operator uses the camera. We walk on the streets, record the sounds we like. We visit a friend-performer and ask him to play something. We record some speech, probably. Create sounds on the computer. this is our material. Then we mix it and process. Music is the result.

[...] Music styles or genres seem to me very limited in their own areas. If it is a concrete music, then we take a concrete sounds from the environment. If it is electronic music, then we synthesize sounds on the computer. Here can be totally anything. I can take any of my romances and put it in different acoustic conditions, something will happen before and after it. I can combine everything.

By the way, such technique leaves the problem of the performance aside because it’s being totally constructed by the author and exists only as a recording and cannot be performed at all. All patches, particles of the «normal» music i record with each performer separately when i visit my friends and we drink tea. We can have several takes and achieve an ideal sound, as in the movie art. This way a sort of low-budget symphonies can be produced, big compositions with many things involved and with the deep contents, but they don’t require to use the whole orchestra, to rent a hall. As they exist as a complete product, anyone can hear them.

The new idea for me here is the perception of composer as a sound catcher, a sort of pilgrim, wandering through the world with the box for sounds that he shakes later to make a sound planes of the unseen power. For me this is a total revolution in my consciousness from the black points on the staves to creating music from everything around us that sounds. [...]

This technique combines total fixation with the absolute and unbound freedom.

[...] Patchwork music as I conceive it encourages the randomness. If there are unwanted sounds mixed in the recording of some instrumental part, then that’s better and this is a proportion of fixation and the freedom that is being searched.

Garden of butterflies can be treated as a realisation of that «;low-budget symphony» idea, that is created from patches of various music. I haven’t hunted this sounds on the street, but this mosaic work already included the sounds of old bed, the mix of balalaika strumming and my piano concert, several electronic experiments and even an episode from second movement of Mozart’s 38 Symphony and much pseudoacustic music with the use of electronic samples as a cheap replacement for real instruments. As a total this is a new approach to the possibilities of the improvisational, spontaneous music that can become the basis not only for small compositions but also for large ones and the big and deep narration.

Born in Moscow in 1984. Composes music since 9 years old. Studied in Moscow Scriabin Music School #23 (composition class of A. A. Tikhomirov). In 1999 he enters Academic Junior Music College in association with Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, music theory department, where he studied basics of composition in prof. K. K. Batashov‘s class and continued the studies in his class in the conservatory, that he graduated magna cum laude in 2008. During his studies he took part in several master-classes by John Corigliano, Rodion Shedrin, Philippe Hurel, Henri Pousseur, Jacob ter Veldhuis, Franz Pomassle, performers Marco Blaauw, Eva Furrer, musicians of Recherche ensemble.

Improvisations

Widely uses the art of improvisation, also during his concerts. Author of a Livejournal-project «Butterflies», where the recorded improvisations form an internet-diary. In 2006 created a project with a composer from St.Petersburg Olga Krashenko called «Bukoliki», where voice, flute and computer improvisations are mixed.

Performed by: Nadezhda Artamonova (violin), Sergey Kondrashov (conductor), orchestra «Russian philharmony». Recorded live September 11, 2008 at the concert in Composers House, Moscow.

The music here is composed as organic and free as if the author is born with the classical form within… The composition is complete and convincing, with that warmth available only to the sound of the violin Произведение получилось цельное и убедительное, с той теплотой и сердечностью, какая присуща только звучанию скрипки.
Mikhail Puchkov, «Russian Musician 2.0»

Born in 1981. Graduated Moscow Conservatory in 2004, studied in A. Nikolaev, R. Ledenev and Y. Butsko classes. Completed post-graduate studies also in R. Ledenev’s class.

The future in the piece is showed as an existing reality. Instruments go out of their initial nature and nearly lose it completely. The inaudibility of certain moments confirms the transition of the music to a new form when the situation of concert performance becomes the important thing without the necessity of having sounding realisation.

The score

I’m greatly interested in torsion fields’ divergence, so I wanted to reproduce them through music… Joke It’s an one movement concerto, traditional music written simply for the joy of the music itself

Born in 1983, Zheleznodorozhniy town, Moscow region.

Graduated Academic Junior Music college in association with Moscow Conservatory (prof V. S. Kiselev trombone class). Graduated Moscow Conservatory in 2007, trombone.

Laureate of V international young wind and percussion performers’ competition (Togliatti 2002, 1st prize) and some others.

Studying composition since 2000 in K.K. Batashov’s class. Graduated composers department of Moscow Conservatory in В 2008. Author of several compositions for various instruments and ensembles.

Sonatas for oboe and piano, trombone and piano, violin and piano, piano solo

String quartet

Flute quartet

Suite “Circles on water” for 4 flutes and trombone

Scherzo-suite for 3 clarinets

Concerto for trombone and orchestra

Chamber symphony for strings (incomplete yet)