György Kurtág Jr.

György Kurtág Jr. Photo sourced from Discogs

György Kurtág Jr. is a Hungarian composer and researcher of electronic and experimental music currently based in Bordeaux, France. He is the current coordinator of art / science at SCRIME in Bordeaux ¹.

Biography

György Kurtág Jr. was born in Budapest, Hungary on Oct 13, 1954. He is the son of the composer György Kurtág and Marta Kurtág, an internationally renowned pianist ³.

He was a founding member of the short lived cult band Spions, formed in 1977 with Gergely Molnár and Péter Hegedűs, with contributions by László Najmányi.

After completing his composition studies in Hungary at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, György Kurtag Jr. left Hungary in the early 1980s for France. He joined the European Music Research Center in Metz from 1980 to 1982. Subsequently, he joined IRCAM ⁶ in Paris, where for 6 years in Paris (1980-1986), he worked as a composer-researcher and RIM (computer music director) ⁷.

Projects and evolution

Between 1980 and 1985, during the period when György Kurtág Jr. worked at IRCAM as a composer-researcher and musical assistant, he worked alongside composers such as Mauricio Kagel, Péter Eötvös and Sylvano Bussotti but also researchers in computer music, among which: Tod Machover (MIT Medialab, Futur Group), David Wessel ⁸ (CNMAT Berkeley ⁹), George Lewis (The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University) and Steven McAdams (McGill's Schulich School of Music). He took part in the tour of Repons by Pierre Boulez in the United States ¹⁰. Since 1983, Gyorgy Kurtág Jr. has collaborated with Ferenc Grünwalsky, composing the music for several feature films, including "Goldberg Variations" which won the film critics' award for best musical composition in 1993 ¹¹. In 1996, with the Lugosi Quartet, he recomposed the soundtrack of Plan 9 from outer space by Ed Wood, presented as a cinema-show in Paris as part of a commission from the festival "la muse en circuit" ¹².

As Art / Science coordinator at SCRIME in Bordeaux, his research encompasses both the analysis and capture of the instrumentalist's gestures and the creation of new instruments. In 1986 he collaborated with the German company Shadow¹³ for the realization of a prototype of a synthesis module for a guitar-midi interface ¹⁴. He is interested in the visual arts, and receives musical commissions from the likes of the Center Georges Pompidou, the Louvre Museum, the Grenoble Museum, as well as from visual artists, videographers and choreographers ¹².

In 1995 he wrote a piece for two octophonic meta-instruments: Cyclone ¹⁶. Since 1999 he has been involved in collaborative composition and various evolving projects. Among others, he has composed for over eight years for a "hybrid electronic" string quartet¹⁷, Zwiegespräch, in collaboration with his father György Kurtág Sr., which is programmed by the Lucerne Festival (2000), the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with the Arditti quartet (2001) and performed by the Keller quartet at the Wiener Festwochen (2002) ¹⁸. He continues to work closely alongside his parents: for instance, they have performed a collaborative concert at the Carnegie Hall in February 1999, which was the subject of an article in The New York Times ¹⁹.

With his progressive rock trio “Sc.Art (Science and Art)” ²¹ he won the Fonogram - Hungarian Music Award 2010 for contemporary classical album of the year. This award-winning album, “The Well-Tempered Universe” ²², is a multimedia concert constructed from recordings of cosmic sounds made by NASA and the University of Iowa.

References

1. "György Kurtag" [1], on scrime (accessed August 19, 2016)
2. http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/gyorgy_kurtag__jr_ [archive] György Kurtág, Jr. Born 1954, Budapest, Budapest, Hungary Notes Father of Judit Kurtág, son of György Kurtág and Márta Kurtág
3. http://www.francemusique.fr/emission/l-improviste/2013-2014/barre-phillips-contrebasse-et-gyorgy-kurtag-junior-synthetiseurs-et-percussion-digitale-radio [archive]: Aux synthetisseurs and digital percussion György Kurtág Jr. musician of Hungarian origin, "fallen into the pot" of music in the cradle, a cradle that parents Kurtág (György and Martha) slipped under the piano, in the small family apartment in Hungary. Music permeated the house, from morning till night.
4. "Nighttime Uproar Kurtág Jr." [2], on SoundCloud (accessed June 22, 2016 )
5. http://www.francemusique.fr/emission/l-improviste/2013-2014/barre-phillips-contrebasse-et-gyorgy-kurtag-junior-synthetiseurs-et-percussion-digitale-radio [3] a cradle that parents Kurtág (György and Márta) slipped under the piano, in the small family apartment in Hungary.
6. «György Kurtág Jr.» [4], sur http://www.francemusique.fr [archive]
7. "Resources" [5], at brahms.ircam.fr (accessed June 22, 2016 )
8. "WWW Ircam: The news" [6], on www.ircam.fr (accessed August 19, 2016)
9. "Search | CNMAT” [7], on cnmat.berkeley.edu (accessed August 19, 2016 )
10. "György Kurtág Jr." [8], on France Musique (accessed June 22, 2016 )
11. «Sc.Art - Music based on sounds from Space» [9], sur Sc.Art - Music based on sounds from Space (consulté le 22 juin 2016)
12. sbuchou, «Découvrez qui est György Kurtág Jr!» [10], sur György Kurtág Jr. ,June 15, 2016 (accessed June 22, 2016 )
13. «Shadow Electronics» [11]
14. «Shadow Guitar Midi» [12]
15. "Gyorgy Kurtag Jr" [13], on France Musique (accessed August 19, 2016)
16. Signé Lazer , “Musiques & Recherches” [archive] , on electrodoc.musiques-recherches.be (accessed August 19, 2016 )
17. "Zwiegespräch, György Kurtág" [14], on brahms.ircam.fr (accessed June 22, 2016)
18. "Ircam: Notice d'oeuvre, Zwiegespräch [de] György Kurtág [Contemporary music portal]" [15] , on www.musiquecontemporaine.fr (accessed June 22, 2016 )
19. Vivien Schweitzer, «A Familial Collaboration on Works by György Kurtág at Zankel Hall», The New York Times,‎ February 3, 2009 (ISSN 0362-4331, read online [16], accessed June 22, 2016)
20. «The Continuator, the machine in synch with musical styles | Neural» [archive], sur neural.it (consulté le 22 juin 2016)
21. «Sc.Art - Music based on sounds from Space» [17], sur Sc.Art - Music based on sounds from Space (consulté le 22 juin 2016)
22. (en-US) «The Well-Tempered Universe» [18], sur Rhapsody, January 21, 2010 (accessed June 22, 2016 )
23. "Modernity X" [19], at www.modernityxhungary.com (accessed June 22, 2016)

Text adapted from the French language Wikipedia