| The composer and pianist Minas Borboudakis, born on Crete in 1974, studied piano and theory in his native city, Heraklion, with Giorgos Kaloutsis and then in Munich and Hamburg with Wilfried Hiller and Peter Michael Hamel (composition), with Olaf Dressler and Ursula Mitrenga (piano); he attended master classes with George Crumb, Luciano Berio, Wolfgang Rihm, Alexander Nasedkin, and Rudolf Kehrer. Minas Borboudakis is one of the most sought-after Greek composers of his generation. He works with renowned ensembles and soloists as the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the SWR Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, the Münchener Kammerorchester, La Camerata of Athens, Kremerata Baltica, the Ensemble Modern, and the percussionist Peter Sadlo. In 2007, Kent Nagano will conduct the premiere of Borboudakis's new work of musical theater at the Münchner Opernfestspiele. The focus of his repertoire as a pianist is, in addition to the performance of his own compositions, the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His oeuvre has received a number of awards: the Günther-Bialas-Kompositionspreis, the Stipendium der Stadt München, the Bayerischer Staatsförderpreis für Musik, the Rodion-Shchedrin-Kammermusikpreis, the scholarship of the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. His music is highly charged with emotion and conforms to no dogmas; rhythm and harmonies are influenced by his Greek origins and moves between the poles of ancient Greek literature, philosophy, and the modern natural sciences. |