Published: 09 August 2011
Category: Artists

The Grafenegg Festival welcomes HK Gruber as its Composer in Residence this year, a position which sees Gruber fully immersed in the Festival programme throughout August and early September.

Highlights of the residency include Gruber conducting the Tonkuenstler Orchestra in the World Premiere of his Northwind Pictures, a Grafenegg Festival commission. This first performance on 4 September forms part of a programme which also includes Gruber’s orchestral work Dancing in the Dark and, after the interval, Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, for which Gruber is joined by a stellar cast including Ian Bostridge and Angelika Kirschlager. Earlier that day Gruber performs as conductor and chansonnier with Bostridge in a matinée programme of songs by Krenek, Weill, Eisler and Britten.

On 13 August Gruber joins the European Union Youth Orchestra as chansonnier to perform his iconic work Frankenstein!! under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Gruber’s brass band work Demilitarized Zones is programmed alongside Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on 19 August, performed by the Tonkuenstler Orchestra with Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

The Composer-in-Residence role also sees Gruber strongly involved with educational work. Family workshops will take place throughout the Festival in which various aspects of composition are explored and developed using Gruber’s music as inspiration. Most uniquely, Gruber leads “Ink Still Wet”, a course for aspiring composer-conductors which culminates in a showcase concert of newly-written works, conducted by the young composers themselves (20-22 August).

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