Paola Prestiniaus modern

Paola Prestini (* 1975) is an Italian-American composer.

Life

Prestini was born in Italy, and graduated from the Juilliard School, where she “had already developed a reputation as a formidable impresario even before she graduated”. She studied there under Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. She was also a PD Soros Fellow. Most recently she was named one of “Musical America 30 Innovators”.

In 1999, while still a student, Prestini co-founded VisionIntoArt, an interdisciplinary arts company that established the annual 21c Liederabend festival, which went on to be performed at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and at BAM’s 2013 Next Wave Festival (in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects), the Colorado Project (for which the New York Times called her music “downright gorgeous”) premiered at Houston’s Da Camera Series, The Met Museum, Stanford University and the Kennedy Center, and a variety of other multimedia collaborations. Her Hubble Cantata was performed in the largest to date communal VR experience at Bric’s Celebrate Brooklyn; the New Yorker said of the event “six thousand of us together, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, floating around the Orion Nebula…Crescendos, beauty, drama…It astounded me, this feeling of floating above Earth, and tears began to emerge from my cardboard goggles…” while Hyperallergic called it “a thundering opus”. Nature Magazine called it “a highly collaborative meld of science and art.”

She is also the founding artistic director and CEO of National Sawdust. Her programming endeavors there have “earned her large stores of gratitude in the new-music world”. She has been quoted by Timeout NY as “Paola Prestini is a name to know in New York new music, as she works to secure a home for innovative composition and performance in Williamsburg”.

She sits on the strategy committee for Prototype Festival, is a regular curator at John Zorn’s The Stone, and also sits on the board of National Sawdust. Some of the compositions she has written or is working on include Gilgamesh, Laybyrinth, The Hubble Cantata, Aging Magician, Epiphany, The Colorado, Oceanic Verses, Two Oars, and Mass Re-Imaginings. Prestini’s music has been commissioned by and performed at the following institutes: Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera and the Kronos Quartet, and in non-U.S. venues. Recordings of her music have been released on VIA Records, Innova, and Tzadik Records, and her compositions have been published in the Arcana series by Hips Road. She is the editor of the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composer handbook.

Of her recent works which focus on the voice, Aging Magician represents her penchant for long process, interdisciplinary work that she self initiates and co-produces. Of Aging Magician, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times stated that “ choral writing is ethereal, unfolding in long-spun lines and chantlike phrases. Yet there are complex stretches of cluster chords that the choristers sing with precision.“ The Boston Globe called her opera Gilgamesh “an enchanted exploration of the eternal mysteries…. atmospheric but tuneful music for “Gilgamesh” inhabited an indie-opera rainforest of its own…” and The Boston Music Intelligencer said of it “It sparkles, both literally and figuratively…Her melodies entice and speak of a modern, yet accessible flare…it holds its intensity with valor through its end.” Upcoming large scale work include a new installment of the River Project with filmmaker Murat Eyuboglu (filmmaker of the Colorado) based on the Amazon, which currently won a 2017 NEA award, and Two Oars, a new opera with Robert Wilson, and the cellist Jeffrey Zeigler.

Source Paola Prestini: https://www.paolaprestini.com/Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paola_Prestini