Chaya Czernowin

Born 1957 in Israel, studied composition at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music until 1982. Fellowships and studies followed in Berlin, Japan and the USA, where she was able to concentrate on forming her musical language and thought. She has taught composition at the Yoshiro Irino Institute, JML, Tokyo, Japan and at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music from 1990-94 and in 1998. In 1992 she won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis. She was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 1996. Since 1997 Chaya Czernowin is a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego since 1997. In 2006/2007 she will be teaching as a professor at the University for Music and Peforming Arts in Vienna.

Her opera PNIMA…ins innere was premiered in 2000 at the Munich Biannual and won the Bavarian Theater Prize that year. Recent and upcoming projects include: a performance of Maim Zarim, Maim Gnuvim (strange water, stolen water) for orchestra, a quintet of soloists and live electronics during the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2002 and the performance of Shu Hai by the Austrian Radio Orchestra and Ute Wassermann during the Festival Wien Modern 2002. Chaya Czernowin is currently working on an opera for the Salzburg Festival 2004, where her work will be featured.

Chaya Czernowin and Steven Kazuo Takasugi are permanent faculty for the Summer Academy master class to give consistency in methodology and content.