Olga Virezoub
Olga Virezoub () (born 18 March 1975 in Grozny, Chechnya) is a Russian-German composer and pianist.
Olga Virezoub was born into a family of musicians. Yet being a child, she traveled with her parents across the whole Soviet Union and acted in guest performances of their theater in children's roles. She then learnt piano and composition in Samara and, after this, she went to St. Petersburg, where, upon a recommendation of her aunt, she began to study composition, piano and improvisation with Georgy Firtich at the Herzen University of St. Petersburg from 1995 to 1997, who immediately introduced her to his colleagues and friends, became her most important mentor and influenced her very strongly as a personality. Equally, following her aunt´s advice, she then went to St. Petersburg Conservatory, where she obtained her main formal education in composition with Sergey Slonimsky and Vladimir Tsytovich from 1996 to 2000. She also attended numerous master classes in composition and piano, among others with Nikolai Petrov and Paul-Heinz Dittrich. Parallely to her music studies she also attended courses in French law and history at the "Collège Universitaire Française" of the University St. Petersburg. In 2001 - 2003 she enrolled into a graduate program in composition and piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover and in 2003 received scholarships to attend master classes for contemporary and jazz music with Alvin Lucier, Tristan Murail, Christian Wolff, Frederic Rzewski, Roscoe Mitchell among others. A Wes residence in the world music program in Middletown, USA followed this experience, where she also worked, among others, with American composers Neely Bruce and Alvin Lucier.
Olga Virezoub is winner of several prizes and scholarships, including the Künstlerhaus Cismar fellowship from the Ministry of Education and Culture Schleswig-Holstein in Grömitz, Germany 2004, and was distinguished for her work in Europe and the USA, for instance, as the "IMRadio´s featured artist" in Chicago 2010 and "NUMBER ONE music´s featured and top 1 in the genre of experimental music/jazz artist" in New York 2012. Her music has been performed and herself performed as a pianist in such events of contemporary and jazz music as the "MusicAL Spring" and "Sound Ways" (1999) in St. Petersburg, "Cage Days" (2001) in Hannover, "Ostrava Days" (2003) in Ostrava, "Kieler Woche" (2005) in Kiel, "Donne Musica "(2004) and " Natale in Musica "(2007) in Rome by performers from and such ensembles as "Sound Ways", "Das Neue Ensemble", "S.E.M. Ensemble", "OCNM Ensemble", "Anthony Braxton Ensemble" as well as with sich legendary musicians and composers as, for instance, Roscoe Mitchell and Thomas Buckner.
Beyond that, as a composer and pianist, she presented many new contemporary works by West European and American composers in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was an initiator of several projects of contemporary chamber music and solo piano works. So, for instance, she was invited by the 'Verein Concertant e. V. Hannover', Germany to give a piano recital with her own and works by European and American composers in 2008, after what she repeated and supplemented this project in Göttingen, Germany in 2009, and, as a piano performer, was engaged in over 30 first performances of her own as well as works by European and American contemporary composers as, for instance, "Senzapatria Sempiterno" by Anton Plate for the concert and award of the honorary doctor title onto the German composer Helmut Lachenmann in 2001 in Hannover.
In addition, she has performed as a drummer and dancer in West African dance in both Europe and the USA, and, in addition to it, is an author of several essays and works in music theory and history.
Olga Virezoub resides in Hanover. She speaks Russian, German, English, French and a little bit Italian and Spanish.
Aesthetics of work
Looking for her own traditions of the contemporary music and multicultural work, she aligned her interests since middle of 2009 very intensively in the direction of the world music, above all of the African traditional music as well as the Indonesian Gamelan music (Gamelan Angklung), exposing herself to the term of world music as a composer, and introducing by this the new possible ways and perspectives for the new music´s advancement, which she shapes, among other things, in the melody – the crucial elements of her work as the so-called perpetua melodia (the everlasting melody) and cantica infinita (the infinite song) or cantiche infinite (the infinite songs), for whose main principle she drew her inspiration, above all, from her Russian origin as well as Russian music melodiousness, but, furthermore, also from the expressive melody of Italian language and poetry and first formulated in her piece Cadenza for violin and live electronics in 2003, - as well as in the form and principles, primarily, of world music - among other things, of Gamelan and African music, characterized furthermore by rhythms of African music and dances as well as West European compositional techniques of the 20th century, US-American - including the rhythms of ragtime and jazz - and electronic music - in particular of electronic dance music.
She particularly expressed and realized these ideas, among others, in such her works as Singa Nebah, 2010 for guitar as well as Pulchritudinous Music, 2010/11 for orchestra.
References
NUMBER ONE music http://www.numberonemusic.com/olgavirezoub
IMRadio http://www.imradio.com
Ministry of Education and Culture Schleswig-Holstein http://www.schleswig-holstein.de