Edith CANAT DE CHIZY
Guest composer
Edith Canat de Chizy is the first female composer to be elected to the Institut de France, elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2005, which she presided over in 2017. Her catalogue currently includes more than 120 works (symphonic, concertante, vocal, and chamber music).
A graduate in Art History and Philosophy, and a violinist by training, she studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where she won six first prizes, including one in composition. She was also a student of Maurice Ohana, to whom she dedicated a biography with her husband, François Porcile, published in 2005 by Éditions Fayard.
Introduced to electroacoustic music through the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, she studied electronics at IRCAM, where she composed two mixed works: Over the Sea (2012), premiered at IRCAM's Manifeste Festival, and Visio (2016) at Radio France's Présences Festival. These were followed by Arcanes (2021), created at CIRM, and L’Ombre (2025), a choreographic performance in mixed reality set to music for percussion and electronics, which opened the 2025 Manifeste Festival with Blanca Li. These experiences have had a significant impact on her writing.
Her works have been commissioned by numerous ensembles and institutions, including: the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra (Voilé, dévoilé), the French National Orchestra (Omen, Missing), the Orchestre de Paris (Les Rayons du jour), the Nederlands Kamerkoor (Dios), the Philharmonie de Paris (En noir et or, Sun dance), the national orchestras of Lyon (Pierre d’éclair), Lille (Drift), Metz (Apocalypsis), Nancy (Sunrise), the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (Outrenoir), the Ensemble Musicatreize (Canciones, Exil, Birds)… Premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, her piece Times was the required piece for the final of the 2009 Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors.
After directing two conservatories, she teach composition at the CRR de Paris from 2007 to 2017. Numerous distinctions have marked her career, including the UNESCO International Tribune of Composers Award for Yell (1990), several awards from SACEM, including the Grand Prix de la Musique Symphonique in 2004, the Coups de cœur from the Académie Charles Cros for her CDs Moving in 2002 and Waves in 2023, and the Grand Prix du Président de la République from the same Académie Charles Cros in 2016 for her entire body of work, the Prix Jeune Talent Musique in 1998, and the 2021 Music Prize awarded by SACD. A laureate of the "100 Women of Culture 2023," she is a Knight of the Legion of Honour, an Officer of the Order of Merit, and a Commander of Arts and Letters.
Her works are published by Henry-Lemoine.
www.youtube.com/@edithcanatdechizy5431
www.presencecompositrices.com/ressources/publications/
www.henry-lemoine.com/fr/
Agustí CHARLES
Guest composer
Composer and teacher born in Manresa (Spain, 1960), he is the author of more than a hundred musical works covering all styles, from solo instrument music to chamber music, band, symphony orchestra, and opera.
He has received commissions from the most prominent national and international institutions, and his music is performed all over the world. He has also received nearly fifty awards, including the most important national and international composition prizes.
He has released a total of four monographic CDs, in addition to other works on some forty recordings. Since 2007, he has devoted himself especially to opera, where he has already written a total of seven titles: “La Cuzzoni, esperpent d'una veu”, premiered at the Staatstheater in Darmstadt (Germany) in October 2007; “Lord Byron, un estiu sense estiu”, premiered in 2011 at the Gran Teatre del Liceu; “Java Suite”, premiered at the Perelada Festival in August 2012; “Històries d'una Reina embogida...”, (Stories of a Bewitched Queen), premiered on December 21, 2019, at the Oracles Theatre in Barcelona; “No es res urgent” (Nothing is Urgent), premiered on streaming at the Liceu in Barcelona in 2020; “Andrómeda Encadenada”, premiered at the Palau de la Música Catalana in October 2021; and most recently, “The Lat Nigth of the World”, premiered on January 24, 2025, at the Stiftung Staatstheater d'Ausburg (Germany).
He is also the author of numerous works related to composition, musical analysis, and orchestration, among which his books stand out: “Análisis de la Música española del siglo XX (Analysis of 20th-Century Spanish Music) (2002),” "Dodecafonismo y serialismo en España (Twelve-Tone Music and Serialism in Spain) (2005), and the collection “Classical and Contemporary Instrumentation and Orchestration (5 volumes) (2005-2018).”
He holds a PhD in Art History and has been a professor of composition at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Aragón and a professor of composition at the ESMUC. He currently teaches orchestration at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Agustín Charles' musical works range from orchestral pieces to opera, with an emphasis on tradition and, in his latest operas, on the integration of new technologies for the spatial diffusion of sound.
w.w.w.agustincharles.com