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Dmitri Kourliandsky

Biography

Dmitri Kourliandski was born in 1976 in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and completed post-graduate course led by Leonid Bobylev. Attended master classes given by many Russian and foreign composers. His compositions won awards in Russia, France and Great Britain. In 2003 he won the Grand Prix of the International Gaudeamus Competition in the Netherlands. Guest of the Berliner Kunstlerprogramm 2008 (DAAD Artist-in-residence).

Dmitri Kourliandski?s music is regularly played in concerts and at festivals held in many Russian cities, CIS, Germany (Donaueschingen, Berlin and Dresden festivals, Schleswig-Holstein and others), the Netherlands (Gaudeamus), Great Britain, Austria (Aspekte Festival), France, Finland (Musica nova, Time of Music), Poland (Warsaw autumn), Greece (Hellenic festival), Serbia, Argentina, Japan and is broadcast worldwide. Dmitri Kourliandski worked with such conductors as Vladimir Fedoseev, Teodor Currentzis, Reinbert de Leeuw, Zholt Nagy and others. His compositions were played by many Russian orchestras and leading European ensembles, such as KlangForum Wien, ASKO and Schoenberg ensembles, Aleph, Slagwerkgroep den Haag, Integrales and many others. He has received commissions from many Russian and European festivals, ensembles and foundations. Some of his works have been published by Le Chant du Monde and Jobert.

Mr. Kourliandski is the founder and editor-in-chief of Tribuna Sovremennoi Muzyki (Tribune of Contemporary Music), the first Russian journal dealing with contemporary music issues. He is a co-founder of the Structural Resistance (StRes) group of composers and member of the Composers? Union of Russia.

From 2004, Dmitri Kourliandski designates his creative search as "objective music". "The concept of music as an object, a visual phenomenon, is opposite to romantic concept characterized by evolution of music in time (which is largely typical of contemporary music, too). In my music, there is no evolution, there is no action. Some compositions can give the listener an impression of action, of dramaturgy. But this is simply a consequence of human perception: when something exists in time, something always happens within us. A human being can feel, experience, think in his innermost being, without this being caused by an exterior action: the action is inner". "I love kinetic sculptures. I like something that seems static and yet at the same time provokes a multitude of thoughts. Formally, my compositions can be defined as a mechanisms whereby if you press a button all the music comes out. Listeners are invited to notice how the piece functions." (From the interview to Makis Solomos. Logbook of the Ensemble Aleph 3rd International Forum for Young Composers. France, 2004). Dmitri Kourliandski?s language completely rejects traditional instrumental sounding. "There can be no restrictions on art. ?Abnormal" sounds do not contradict today?s language position. On the contrary, such sounds form new active fields, where the decisive element is not the reliance on available experience, but the possibility of gaining new one." ("Objective Music. From General to Particular". Tribune of Contemporary Music, No. 1/4, 2006).

Unsolvable acoustic case (2007)

for 6 percussionists, 6 instrumentalists and live electronics

Musical oeuvre is a complex of limits. Line up, length, technical abilities of instruments, physical abilities of musicians, concert hall acoustics, human ear perception barriers, background and experience of the audience, musician, composer, elaborated stereotypes, latent commitments, mutual expectations? It loops a dead circle, secret convention, assuring a certain degree of comfort for the listener, musician, composer. It seems impossible to break the circle without breaking conventions. But the idea of breaking conventions became in its turn a banality. Actually, the history of music in general is a history of breaking conventions. So, probably we can only bask in the irresistance or resistance to the situation formed by circumstances?

In this piece I tried to mark clearly all the limits of its functioning. Instruments are used at the extremes of their possibilities. All sounds are unstable ? the sound production (sound as a consequence of a gesture) guarantees the minimal possibility for the musician to control the sound result, so only fragile territories of the sound are used. The ensemble of 12 musicians is considered as an aggregate ? a huge monolith instrument, generating a maximally complex sound. The volume and complexity of the sound structure disables differentiated perception of its texture. Electronics in its turn is used as another, external limiter ? frequencies produced by the ensemble are clipped from both sides and one of the used instruments is a no-input-mixing-board (i.e. line-in is connected with line-out) ? a pure example of closed construction. All these circumstances are to make the piece as a closed mechanism, a construction which acts beyond conventional conceptions of the musical oeuvre or the concert situation in general?