About the Authors

Thomas Beimel, composer, musicologist, violist was born in 1967 in Essen, Germany. Starting as a viola player, he finalized music studies and instrumental pedagogics at Hochschule für Musik im Rheinland. In 1989 he founded together with other musicians the ensemble Partita Radicale, specializing in the field between improvisation and composition. Since 1993, the ensemble worked with outstanding Romanian composers (there are two CDs with contemporary Romanian music released by sonoton, Munich).
Since 1991, Thomas Beimel has made several musicological researches resulting in book publications on the music of the Belgium composer Jacqueline Fontyn, and of the Romanian composer Myriam Marbe. Since 1998, he conceived many broadcasts on topics like contemporary music in Romania and Latin America, classical modern music in Eastern Europe, music and rhetoric.
Since 1994 Thomas Beimel works also as composer. In the summer of 1997 he studied privately composition with Myriam Marbe, Bucharest. In 1999, his first opera was premiered at Stadttheater Mönchengladbach, Germany. Stage activities were continued in June 2001 by the theatre music for the first integral drama adaption of Franz Kafka’s novel In der Strafkolonie, opera house, Wuppertal. In 2002, faltenbalg, a stereophonic composition for five orchestras of accordions, was premiered.
Thomas Beimel received a special award for composition, Impulse, 2004. He was 2005-2006 composer-in-residence, Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg.


Nicolae Brânduș studied piano and composition at the National University of Music in Bucharest. He attended the summer courses for new music in Darmstadt (1969-1980) and Aix-en-Provence (1979). In 1985 he worked in the Musical Research Department at IRCAM (Paris) and realized electronic music at GMEB (Bourges) in 1996. He was a soloist pianist at the Philharmonic of Ploiești (1960-1969); professor of chamber music at the National University of Music in Bucharest (1969-2005); editor at the Muzica journal; member of the executive committee (1991-1993) and president of the Romanian section of the ISCM (1994-2002). He has received the Honorary Mention at the International Competition Prince Pierre de Monaco, and the George Enescu Prize of the Romanian Academy. Among his compositions, the most known are the opera Tarr & Fether, the Ballad Symphony, the symphonic works as Phtora, SinEuphonia II, two piano concertos. Brânduș wrote the book Interferences, published articles and was on lecture tours as visiting composer in the USA, Germany, Israel, Greece, Hong Kong.


Ştefan Firca is a musicologist and lecturer at the National University of Music in Bucharest, department of Musicology. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the Ohio State University, with a dissertation on the carnivalesque aspects of the late 1960s psychedelic culture. In 2013 he finished a MIDAS post-doctoral program at the National University of Music in Bucharest. With experience in the history of both art music and rock music, he has published on topics ranging from Henry Purcell to Giacinto Scelsi, but is particularly interested in the popular culture of the 20th century, the nexus between avant-garde and popular music, film and film music, and issues of cultural imagination. He is the author of two forthcoming books: Imbroglio (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 2014) and Circles and Circuses: Carnivalesque Tropes in the Late 1960s Musical and Cultural Imagination (his Ph.D. dissertation, to be published in 2015).


Radu Mihalache (b.1990) is currently studying musicology at the National University of Music Bucharest, under the supervision of Valentina Sandu-Dediu. His main focus is the study of Early Music, and he is also interested in correlating musicology and the media, as a collaborator (since 2011) with the Romanian Broadcasting Company (Radio România Muzical). During the academic year 2012-2013 he studied, due to an Erasmus grant, at Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain.


Mihai Murariu (b. 1984) has studied piano at the George Enescu Music Highschool in Bucharest. In 2003, he started studying composition at the National University of Music Bucharest, with Dan Dediu, Doina Rotaru, Octavian Nemescu, Nicolae Coman and Dan Buciu. Since then he has won several prizes at national and international competitions and his works have been performed in some of the most important festivals in Romania (International New Music Week, Meridian, IconArts) and on many other stages, including abroad (Rome, Helsinki, Vienna, Belgrade etc.). He has also collaborated with several of the most important orchestras and art institutions in the country (George Enescu Philharmonic, National Radio Orchestra, National Radio Chamber Orchestra, Bucharest National Opera, Bucharest National Theatre). Mihai Murariu is currently a lecturer at the National University of Music Bucharest, and since 2012, he is an organist at the St. Joseph Roman Catholic Cathedral in Bucharest.


Download as PDF