Friday, July 1st 2011 // 21.30 // Auditorium S. Domenico
Concert

Alexander Balanescu, violin
Kristie Wilkinson, viola
James Shenton, violin
Nick Cooper, cello

Alexander Balanescu is one of the most visionary and exciting violinists of our time as well as a prolific composer. His repertoire is centred in contemporary and new music. Balanescu was born in Romania and at the age of seven went to the Special School for Music, in Bucharest. Studies continued at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, Trinity College and from 1975-79 at the Juliard School, New York City, where he also took part in master classes with Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Felix Galimir and Robert Mann. He returned to London and began working with many of the major contemporary music groups of the early 1980's including Capricorn Music Project, Matrix, Gemini Dream Tiger and the London Sinfonietta. In 1979 Balanescu became leader of the Michael Nyman Ensemble and toured with this group around the world for 15 years. During the same period he was also member of the Gevin Bryars Ensemble. In 1987 he formed his own quartet. The Balanescu Quartet has commissioned over 25 works to date beginning with Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, Kevin Volans and Balanescu himself, before going on to include the non-classical writers John Lurie, David Byrne, Keith Tippet, Carla Bley and others, recording with Spiritualized and recording and touring with the Pet Shop Boys. Recent collaborations as a composer/performer include dance with Merryl Tankard, Pina Baush, Rosemary Lee, Suzy Blok, John Ulrich, Philip Saire, and Virgilio Sieni and theatre productions as well. In 2002 Balanescu was on tour with Philip Glass in " Screens". Balanescu recently premièred a ground breaking project in collaboration with Austrian video artist Klaus Obermaier, featuring the Balanescu Quartet. His work is based on the songs and voice of the legendary Romanian folk singer Maria Tanase.