Hèctor Parra

Biography

Hèctor Parra (Barcelona on 1976) has studied composition with Jonathan Harvey, Brian Ferneyhough as well as with Michael Jarrell in Geneva. He has the Master in Arts of the Paris-VIII University with honours. He has been Professor of Electroacoustic Composition at the Conservatory of Music of Zaragoza, in Spain, and actually he is teaching composition at Ircam, in Paris.

Premieres of his works have been performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Klangforum Wien, Ensembe Recherche, the Arditti Quartet, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Radio Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Freiburger Barockorchester, Concerto Köln, Barcelona National Orchestra, Spain National Orchestra, etc.

He received commissions from the French state, the Ircam-Centre Pompidou, the Berlin Academy of Arts, the Strasbourg Musica Festival, Musée du Louvre, WDR, SWR, Kölner Philharmonie, Mécénat Musical Société Générale and the Selmer Society, among others. His works are premiered at the international festivals of Lucerne, Warsaw Autumn, Wien Modern, Paris Philharmonie, Donaueschingen, Ircam Agora and Manifeste, Witten, Stuttgart Opera House, Bacelona Opera Liceu, Guggenheim NY, San Francisco Arts Festival, Vienna Konzerthaus...

He has composed five operas in close collaboration with writers such as Marie NDiaye and Händl Klaus, that has been staged by Caixto Bieito, Vera Nemirova, Georges Lavaudant, Matthew Ritchie, Benjamin Schad and Robert Pienz at the Berlin Staatsoper 2016, Teatro Real/Teatros de Canal 2017, Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele 2015, Münchener Biennale 2014, Theater Freiburg 2014, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord 2014, Festival Musica Strasbourg 2014, Sophiensaele Berlin and Basel Gare du Nord 2013, Gran Teatre del Liceu 2010, Luxemburg Philharmonie 2010, Kaaitheater Bruxelles 2010, Centre Pompidou 2009, Opera de Hoy 2007, Madrid, etc. His opera ‘Das geopferte Leben, 2014’ was nominated by the prestigious German magazine Opernwelt ‘one of the premieres of the year’, and his last opera, Wilde, has been qualified as ‘a masterpiece’ by the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the specialized magazine Das Opernglas.

Winner of the Ernst von Siemens Composers Prize 2011 and Catalan National Prize for Culture 2017, in 2009 he won the Tendències Prize of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. In 2007 he won the Donald Aird Memorial Prize of San Francisco and in 2008 the Impuls/Klangforum Wien de Graz. In 2005 he was unanimously awarded the Tremplin Prize given by the Ensemble Intercontemporain. In 2002 he won the Prize of the National Institute for Performing Arts and Music of Spain.

A monographic CD with his trios and chamber music performed by the ensemble Recherche has been published by the label KAIROS (2008). In 2010 KAIROS publishes his chamber opera Hypermusic Prologue, with a libretto of the renowned Harvard physicist Lisa Randall, played by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Ircam, and in 2012 Col-legno and the Ernst von Siemens Foundation publishes his fourth monographic CD: Caressant l’Horizon.

His works are published by Durand/Universal Music Publishing Classical, Paris, and Editorial Tritó (Barcelona).

Events