About the authors

Dan Dediu (b. 1967) graduated composition at the Music University in Bucharest (1989) and attended post-graduate courses at HMdK in Vienna (1990/91). Among his teachers one could name the composers Ștefan Niculescu, Dan Constantinescu and Francis Burt. In 1995, he earned his PhD in Music with a thesis about Phenomenology of Composition. Dediu has served as artistic director of the International Week of New Music Festival in Bucharest. In 2003 is appointed professor for composition at the National University of Music Bucharest. Between 2008-2016 he chaired the same institution as elected rector. His over 170 compositions are worldwide performed and cover all the genres. Much of his music was produced on CDs by Albany Records, Cavalli, NEOS, NM Extra, Move Records and Casa Radio. He received prizes and awards for composition in Romania and abroad. Also, he is the recipient of two honorary doctorates in Romania, at University of Arts Iași and University of Craiova.


Ana Diaconu has graduated in both Law and Musicology, the latter under PhD. Prof. Valentina Sandu-Dediu’s tutelage at the National University of Music Bucharest. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the same institution with a research focusing on The Romanian Diaspora Composers in France in the Second Half of the 20th Century. During the academic year of 2016-2017 she has studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris through an Erasmus scholarship. Throughout her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees studies, Ana has authored the programme notes for The Romanian Radio Orchestras and Choirs’ concerts and has worked as an editor and radio host at Radio România Muzical. Starting with the 2017 edition, she is the program editor of the George Enescu International Festival and Competition and she currently works at the Research, Innovation and Information Unit (National University of Music Bucharest).


Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music. During the 1970s he spearheaded the revival of klezmer music. Today he is a performer on the klezmer dulcimer, the cimbal, and on the Ottoman lute, the tanbur. His book, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition, and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin, 1996) is taught as a basic text worldwide. Between 2011 and 2015 he researched the Jewish, Gypsy and Greek musical traditions of Moldova/Bessarabia, sponsored by NYU Abu Dhabi. Feldman is also an authority on Ashkenazic dance, forming part of his current research on the role of gesture in the performing arts, which he taught in the NYU Abu Dhabi core course “Gesture” (2013-15) and in NYU on the Square (2018). In 2017 he gave a series of workshops on this topic in Tokyo and in Moscow. In 2004 he co-directed the successful application of the Mevlevi Dervishes of Turkey as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity for UNESCO. His new book From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes: Music, Poetry and Mysticism in the Ottoman Empire is sponsored by the Agha Khan University and will be published by Edinburgh University Press. Feldman is currently a Senior Research Fellow affiliated with New York University, Abu Dhabi, and the Artistic Director of the Klezmer Institute.


Cecilia Benedicta Pavel studied musicology at the National University of Music Bucharest with PhD Prof. Valentina Sandu-Dediu. During her studies, she has won numerous prizes in musicology, music criticism, piano and music theory competitions. She has published articles in the Musicology Papers, Actualitatea muzicală and Acord journals, and has given presentations at the International Musicological Society Conference and other musicology symposia in Bucharest, Cluj and Iași. In recent years, she has focused her research on 20th-century Romanian music. Her study, “Wilhelm Georg Berger. Conturarea stilului componistic și gândirea modal-serială” [Wilhelm Georg Berger. The Compositional Style Outlining and the Modal-Serial Thinking] was published in the volume Wilhelm Georg Berger. Restituiri [Wilhelm Georg Berger. Restitutions], edited by Prof. Olguța Lupu (Editura Muzicală, Bucharest, 2019). She is currently a doctoral student at UNMB, editor at the Editura UNMB and member of the Musicology Today: Journal of the National University of Music Bucharest editorial staff.


Ioana Raluca Voicu-Arnăuțoiu graduated from the National University of Music in Bucharest (violin class) and holds a doctorate with a thesis on The Violin Sonata from Debussy to Enescu. She taught chamber music at the same university until 2015 and between 1982 and 2000 she was a member of the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra. She is author of various articles and a book about Béla Bartók’s violin and piano sonatas (Ars Docendi Publishing House of the Bucharest University, 2012). She has also researched and written about Romania’s recent history including articles about composers marginalized for ideological reasons (George Enescu, Mihail Jora, Paul Constantinescu, Alfred Alessandrescu, George Georgescu, Mîndru Katz), and books about two prominent musicians who were tailed while in exile, Sergiu Celibidache and Constantin Silvestri (Ars Docendi Publishing House of the Bucharest University, in 2012 and 2013). She also created the website www.muzicieni-in-arhive.ro.


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