A visual artist by training and practice, and a graduate of the National University of Arts in Bucharest – Sculpture and Graphics (Master’s Degree), Gabriela Tofan has carried out numerous activities within the Romanian cultural sphere over the past 15 years.

She has collaborated with several NGOs engaged in the development of musical, artistic, and educational projects, exhibitions, and cultural promotion activities, including Elite Art Club UNESCO, Artex Cultural Foundation, the “Mihail Kogălniceanu” Memorial Museum, the “Paul Cernătescu” Memorial Museum in Iași, the “Paul Păltan” University History Museum in Galați, the “Grigore Antipa” National Museum of Natural History, the “George Enescu” National Museum, AFCN, as well as other NGOs and higher education institutions specialising in culture.

Since 2012, Gabriela Tofan has coordinated Art&Co Association, an organisation that actively supports Romanian culture through the initiation, coordination, and implementation of specific projects such as InnerSound New Art Festival, Zona Imaginarium, ÎN TRUP. New Chamber Opera, Close to Art – Close to People, and LEGENDS.

In her professional journey, Gabriela Tofan was part of the promotion team of the National Museum of Art of Romania for five years and has been, for almost eight years, a member of the promotion team of the Camerata Regală Orchestra.

Music… ballet… music… piano… books… piano… competitions… music… life… piano… children… music.

Once upon a time, there was a little red toy piano. And so, from a toy began a whole life spent joyfully on stage!

Then there was ballet. One foot up, one foot down, a great passion – and what do you know, it was still all about music! There was a lady who, at every meeting, worked her magic and brought music to our aid.

What else was there? Books – many, many books! There were endless discussions with my father about whether book X was too early or if I had skipped book Y! Wonderful moments! Like the time I sprained my ankle at around 8 or 9 years old and happily wore a cast, because it gave me the chance to read all day long! That was when I discovered The Three Musketeers and La Medeleni.

Then came schools, wonderful and dear people with whom I had the chance to work and grow – Ada Ulubeanu, Ludmila Popișteanu, Ladislau Csendes, Dan Grigore, Delia Pavlovici, and Sandu Sandrin.

After that, I discovered concerts with orchestra – some rarely performed, story-like concerts for children who are wise and have big hearts, duo-concertante performances, and contemporary music concerts. The latter are a true passion of mine. Everything that is new, different, and inventive sparks my interest and brings me joy!

Come and see how we have managed so far to organise the new! We hope you’ll enjoy it – and that you’ll come again!

Composer Diana Rotaru (b. 1981, Bucharest) has written chamber and orchestral music, music for multimedia and dance performances, film scores for short films, and chamber opera. She is the recipient of several important awards, including the George Enescu Prize of the Romanian Academy (2008), the ISCM-IAMIC Young Composer Award (Vilnius, 2008), First Prize ex aequo at the George Enescu International Composition Competition (2003 and 2005), and the Irino Prize for Shakti (Japan, 2004).

Since 2012 she has been the coordinator of CIMRO.RO, and since 2019 she has served as President of the Romanian Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (SNR-SIMC). She is currently an Associate Professor at the National University of Music Bucharest, within the Department of Composition.

Born in 2002 in Cluj-Napoca, Rubin Szabó Bázsa Lovász began her musical studies at the “Sigismund Toduță” Music College, where she studied piano and violin. In 2020, she embarked on her higher musical education at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Academy of Music, studying violin under the guidance of Lecturer Dr. Răsvan-Ionuț Dumitru. In the same year, she also began her Philosophy studies at Babeș-Bolyai University.

In 2022, she founded the “Contemp(l)o” project in Cluj-Napoca, a platform promoting contemporary music as well as young composers and instrumentalists. That same year, she also began her studies in Musical Composition at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Academy of Music under Associate Professor Dr. Cristian-Antoniu Bence-Muk.

In the summer of 2022, she took part in the Erasmus project Hangzavart – Paikka (Hungary), where she deepened her knowledge of contemporary music, both as a composer (microtonal music, aleatoric music, prepared piano, electronic and mixed music) and as a performer (extended techniques, contemporary improvisation, and jazz).

In 2023, she was awarded Second Prize at the Coraliada National Choral Composition Competition (Category: Mixed Choir). She was also selected, alongside nine other composers, for the finals of the Retracing Bartók National Composition Competition.

She has attended composition courses and workshops with Cristian Lolea, Nadav Lev, Amos Elkana, Boaz Ben-Moshe, Alexandre Jamar, Barnabás Dukay, János Bali, and Ákos Nagy.

Rubin is active in the dual role of composer and performer (violinist).

As a performer, she has won prizes at national competitions and has performed both as a soloist and as part of chamber ensembles (such as the Resonance Quartet) at festivals across Romania. She is also an active orchestral musician, performing both in Romania and abroad (Hungary, Serbia, Estonia, Germany, Czech Republic).

Since the 2022–2023 season, she has worked with the Odorheiu Secuiesc Philharmonic and collaborates with other orchestras, philharmonics, and opera houses in Romania.

She has taken part in masterclasses with Remus Azoiței, Ștefan Horváth, Corina Loboț, Aylen Pritchin (Russia), Kaido Välja (Estonia), Tanja Becker-Bender (Germany), and Konrad von Abel (Germany).

The coexistence of intuitive and rational dimensions in the formation of composer Gabriel Mălăncioiu (born in 1979 in Brașov) is rooted in his graduation from both the Faculty of Automation and Computers and the Faculty of Music and Theatre in Timișoara. Alongside the decisive influence of Maestro Remus Georgescu, who initiated him into the study of musical composition, his Master’s and Doctoral studies at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca brought him into contact with major figures of Romanian musical life, such as Cornel Țăranu, Adrian Pop, Valentin Timaru, and Eduard Terényi.

Gabriel Mălăncioiu’s music has been performed on five continents in more than 300 concerts, interpreted by prestigious ensembles such as Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, the Slovenian Chamber Choir, and Ensemble Aventure; by soloists such as Florian Mueller, Gudrun Hinze, and Richard Craig; and under conductors including Michael Wendeberg, Huba Hollókői, and Martina Batič.

Composer Corneliu Dan Georgescu remarked that Gabriel Mălăncioiu is “one of the most active personalities, a self-assured and highly original voice in the contemporary musical landscape.” His scores are published by Universal Edition.

Gabriel Mălăncioiu is a member of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists, of the Executive Committee of SNR-SIMC, and of several international musical organisations, including Vox Novus (USA), La Villa des Compositeurs (France/Italy), Temp’ora (France), Access Contemporary Music (USA), and the Society of Composers (USA). He currently teaches Stylistics of Contemporary Music Performance, Orchestration, and Musical Analysis at the West University of Timișoara, Faculty of Music and Theatre.

Sabina Ulubeanu is one of the most complex artistic personalities of her generation, with over 25 years of creative activity, spanning composition, musicology, photography, experimental performance, and the artistic direction of a contemporary music and arts festival.

She was born in 1979 in Bucharest. She studied piano at the George Enescu Music High School, and then attended the National University of Music Bucharest, under the guidance of Professors Tiberiu Olah and Doina Rotaru. In 2001–2002, she studied composition with Violeta Dinescu on an Erasmus scholarship at Oldenburg, Germany. In 2011, under Octavian Nemescu, she earned a PhD in Music, summa cum laude, with a thesis entitled “The Function of Memory in the Construction of Musical Time”, which represents the artistic manifesto of her work.

Her compositions include chamber, symphonic, choral, and multimedia works, performed in Romania, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, the United States, and Iran, in festivals such as George Enescu, Art Safari, SIMN, Meridian, InnerSound, Gemischter Satz, Timsonia, and in concerts organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute. Her works have won national and international composition prizes and have been broadcast on European public radio.

She has collaborated with renowned performers and ensembles, including Arcadia Quartet, Petersen Quartet, Camerata Regala Orchestra, Dublin Sound Lab, Green Thing Ensemble, Archeus Ensemble, Aperto Ensemble, SonoMania Ensemble, UNMB Symphony Orchestra, UNMB Dixtuor Ensemble, as well as distinguished conductors and soloists: Tiberiu Soare, Gabriel Bebeselea, Claudia van Hasselt, Matei Ioachimescu, Alexandru Tomescu, Adrian Tomescu, Laura Buruiana, Matei Varga, Adriana Paler-Nicolescu, Barbara Lueneburg.

On September 1, 2019, her orchestral work #justacomposer opened the concert series Music of the 21st Century at the George Enescu International Festival. Since 2006, she has also explored photography, focusing on intimate spaces and human relationships, reflecting on time, space, and memory. Her photographs have been exhibited in Romania, Portugal, and Austria, and are part of private collections in several countries.

Since 2011, she has been the founder and artistic director of the InnerSound New Arts Festival in Bucharest, Romania’s first platform promoting contemporary music in relation to visual arts and multimedia. Under her direction, the festival was nominated for the AFCN Awards (2016, 2018) and the Radio Romania Cultural Awards (2018).

In 2013, she became a music critic for the George Enescu International Festival website, and has also contributed to publications such as Ziarul Festivalului, Liternet.ro, and the musicology journal Muzica. She has appeared as a speaker at events including TEDx Cambridge School of Bucharest (2015), Aspen Ideas Sibiu (2016), PR Beta Timisoara (2017), Mastering the Music Business Bucharest (2017), Pecha Kucha Bucharest, and frequently appears on radio and TV programs.

In 2021, together with mezzo-soprano Claudia van Hasselt and composer Amen Feizabadi, she developed the transmedia project The Unified Voices of Banat, inspired by the historical Banat region, premiering in Berlin and later performed in Bucharest and Timișoara. In August 2022, she coordinated the contemporary dance and music residency BioAREALab, collaborating with choreographers Cosmin Manolescu and Cristina Lilienfeld as composer and performance artist.

Andrei Virgil Popescu, born on 22 January 1997 in Iași, began studying the violin at the age of six with the violinist Ioan Morna. He later continued his musical studies at the "Octav Băncilă" National College of Arts in Iași, in the violin class of Professors Irina Honciuc and Natalia Epure.

His compositional debut took place during the concert of the orchestra of the "Octav Băncilă" National College of Arts in Iași in December 2014, where the overture Elysium was performed, a work composed under the guidance of the composer Ciprian Andrei Ion.

He went on to attend the "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iași, where he studied composition with Associate Professor Dr Ciprian Andrei Ion and conducting with Associate Professor Dr Bogdan Chiroșcă.

During his undergraduate studies, he participated in national composition competitions, receiving several awards, the most notable being: two first prizes at the "Alexandru Zirra" National Composition Competition in 2018 and 2020, and third prize at the "Ștefan Niculescu" National Composition Competition in 2016.

His conducting debut took place during the 2020–2021 season of the Romanian National Opera in Iași, with W. A. Mozart’s opera The Impresario.

Between 2020 and 2022, he composed the music for the theatrical productions: Oricând cu plăcere by I. Mircioagă and R. Dragomirescu; Juna primă by J. P. Dopagne; and Soacra cu trei nurori by Ion Creangă, directed by Valentin Marcoș, staged at the independent theatre "TACT" in Sighișoara and at the "Luciafărul" Theatre in Iași.

He is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the National University of Music Bucharest, in the composition class of Professor Dr Dan Dediu.

I am from Brașov and began making music after my parents put me in situations where I had to test my abilities in a variety of fields: I attended primary school at a German-language school, went to a computer camp, joined a chess club, practised karate… From the fifth grade onwards, I was a student at the “Tudor Ciortea” Music High School (at that time School No. 26 “of Arts”), studying the clarinet, an instrument chosen by the admission committee after I learned that it was already too late for piano. Piano, however, always remained a serious interest (in the eighth grade, I prepared to audition for principal piano, studied the required repertoire, but… again, it was not possible).

In the end, I became a composer, somewhat by chance: I entered a composition competition for students and, to the surprise of others and… myself, I won two prizes with the two pieces I submitted. During high school, I conducted an amateur choir in the commune of Cristian, and choral music has always been dear to me (I am currently a chorister in Cappella Transylvanica, a traditional choir from Cluj). I also studied the cello as a secondary instrument throughout high school. Both clarinet and cello studies (even though I did not become highly skilled at either) were extremely useful in my professional journey.

I prepared to audition for the National University of Music Bucharest (UNMB), but a summer composition course taught by the composer Dan Voiculescu – a true “wizard” – diverted me to the Music Academy in Cluj. There, I studied composition with the composer and professor Cornel Țăranu, harmony with the composer Eduard Terënyi, and counterpoint with the composer Dan Voiculescu.

After completing my studies, I remained a faculty member at ANMGD, initially teaching Harmony, and later Counterpoint, Choral Arrangement, and, in recent years, Composition. Piano has always remained a serious pursuit, and although I did not become a concert pianist, I manage reasonably well at the keys. I teach theoretical disciplines with passion and consider teaching my primary vocation.

My music tends to explore more miniature and chamber forms. I have never been particularly concerned with very new sonorities; I enjoy making music from determined pitches, rhythms, and melodies. In childhood, I was fascinated by Greek mythology (I obsessively read Alexandru Mitru’s two-volume Legendele Olimpului and fell hopelessly in love with stories of gods and mortals). Mythological themes, although “worn,” have concerned me throughout my life, and I have set to music the stories of Philemon and Baucis, Actaeon and Narcissus, the sad tale of Arachne, and the immortal myth of the musician who tried to bring his wife back from the underworld, Orpheus and Eurydice. I have also created many choral arrangements, primarily of religious music.

In front of a blank page, alienated, I converse with my shadow, with my masks and doubles, moving along the strip between reality and dream. I approach the computer keyboard, take up the microphone or the camera, play an instrument and conduct simultaneously; the entire world becomes the multimedia space of my duplications, instances that turn into blended sound spectres bursting through the speaker membrane or visual images projected, dancing on the screen.

He studied composition in Bucharest with Ștefan Niculescu and Dan Constantinescu, and in Vienna with Francis Burt. He has composed over 180 works covering nearly all musical genres: five symphonies and another 20 orchestral pieces; eleven concertos (for saxophone, viola, violin, piano, cello, trombone, guitar; a double concerto for violin and cello; a triple concerto for flute, clarinet and cello; and a triple concerto for violin, cello and piano); seven string quartets; chamber music in various ensembles; piano music; choral works; five operas (Post-ficțiunea, Münchhausen, Eva!, O scrisoare pierdută, D’ale Carnavalului); and a concert opera (Wagner Under).

He has won several national and international composition prizes and has served as artistic director of the International Week of New Music festival (in 1999, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2016–2022). Dan Dediu is a professor of composition, artistic director of the Profil ensemble, and between 2008 and 2016 he was Rector of the National University of Music Bucharest. He has also been awarded honorary doctorates by the George Enescu University of Arts in Iași, the University of Craiova, and the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts in Chișinău. In June 2022, he was elected President of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania.

Irina Perneș is a composer and violinist born in 2001. She began studying the violin at the age of seven and is currently studying classical composition at the National University of Music in Bucharest, under the guidance of composer Diana Rotaru.

She began her composition studies with Sabina Ulubeanu, continuing to deepen them after being admitted to the university’s classical composition department. Following her university admission, an important project that influenced her path was the contemporary music masterclass “Escape Art Lab,” where she studied violin, composition, and improvisation with teachers such as Diana Rotaru, Raluca Stratulat, and Alessandra Rombola, as well as another improvisation masterclass led by percussionist Aldo Aranda.

After starting university, she participated in composition competitions such as “The Creative Music Class” in December 2020 (1st prize with two works, The Phobia Suite for solo piano and The Broken Vinyl of Beethoven for string quartet); the “Ștefan Niculescu” composition competition in April 2021 (2nd place with a duo for cello and piano, Visele insomniacului); the “International Composer Prize” in August 2021 (with a piano sonata, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); and the national Mihail Jora competition in January 2022 (1st prize with a quintet for flute, string trio, and piano, Animalele din Oglinzi).

From 1 October 2022 to 5 February 2023, she studied at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Poland, as an Erasmus student in the classical composition department under Professor Ignacy Zalewski. Recently, she has focused more on concerts than competitions, participating annually in the university’s composition concerts, Chei: in 2021 with the piece Broken Vinyl of Beethoven, in 2022 with M87 performed by Vlad Polgar along with audioplayback, and in 2023 with Visele Insomniacului for cello and piano. In the SIMN concerts, her piece Fauna of Mirrors was performed by the Sonomania ensemble, and on 22 May 2023, a solo horn piece she wrote, Monologue on a Song without Words, will be performed by Danish horn player Erik Sandberg.

Her works were also performed during her Erasmus stay in Poland: Tinnitus for flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, and percussion in the composition class concert of Professor Ignacy Zalewski on 20 December 2022; Loneliness for Moog Mother-32, audioplayback, and video by Tudor Jelescu in the Elektrofonia concert on 8 January 2023 (with a repeat performance a week later in Poznań); and Three Friends for two voices and ensemble in the contemporary concert on 29 January 2023.

In Bucharest, she collaborated with director Alma Andresscu, composing the electronic music for the theatre production Legăturile Klarei, which premiered on 12 April 2023 at Teatrul Apropo and continued performances on 16, 18, and 22 May 2023. Her most recent concert will be with the Atem ensemble on 18 May 2023 in Timișoara, as part of the Retracing Bartók competition.

Sebastian Androne-Nakanishi graduated from the National University of Music in Bucharest, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees under the guidance of Professor Dan Dediu. Through two Erasmus scholarships, he studied musical composition at Birmingham Conservatoire and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.

He subsequently obtained a second master’s degree in Composition for Film, Theatre, and Media at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Switzerland).

His music has been performed by renowned ensembles and orchestras across Europe and beyond, winning more than 25 national and international composition competitions, including the Grand Prize at the George Enescu Competition (2014). In 2022, he was named Composer of the Year at the International Classical Music Awards, becoming the first Romanian to receive this distinction.

I believe that music should be written with passion, honesty, and a strong desire to weave connections among all of us and among all things, both synchronically and diachronically. My journey belongs to the question “Who am I?”, a search for one’s own (artistic) will, the facets of one’s truth, increasingly effective ways of expressing oneself (compositionally), and the most precise means to evoke the “inner self.” It is not a journey toward originality, but toward authenticity. It is not a pursuit of acoustic innovation, but a musical manifestation that is as ingenuous, eloquent, and meaningful as possible.

Cristian Bence-Muk (b. 31 August 1978, Deva) graduated from the Composition Department of the “Gh. Dima” National Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, under Professor Hans Peter Türk, class of 2002. In 2005, he earned a Doctorate in Music, specialising in Musical Creation, under the guidance of Acad. Prof. Cornel Ţăranu. Currently, Cristian Bence-Muk serves as Associate Professor in the subjects “Musical Forms and Analysis” and “Composition” and is the Dean of the Theoretical Faculty at the Cluj Music Academy.

His musical output includes choral, vocal, chamber, symphonic, vocal-symphonic works, chamber opera, and ballet. He has received several national awards, and his works have been performed in concerts both in Romania and abroad (France, Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, USA, etc.) and published by music publishers in Romania and Switzerland.

As a project director, he coordinated two research projects funded by C.N.C.S.I.S. (2006–2007 and 2010–2013), which promoted creation, performance, and musicological research in contemporary music. He has been actively involved in various cultural and artistic syncretic projects exploring the relationship between music and literature, painting, sculpture, and film.

In addition to his contemporary music projects, since 2013 he has arranged and orchestrated 27 Romanian folk carols in a vocal-symphonic format (the CD Maria se preumbla, containing the first 14 arrangements, sold over 10,000 copies), a work recognised with an Excellence Award for vocal-symphonic arrangements of Romanian carols – the LSM Excellence Award 2019, Chicago. On 11 June 2022, he was elected Vice President of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania.

Diana Rotaru’s adventures in the Land of Contemporary Sonic Wonders began early, as a result of cohabiting with her favourite composer – who, quite coincidentally, also happens to be her mother. A consequence of this is that she fell irreversibly in love with her mother’s music and the people around her. She writes the former (favouring hypnagogic atmospheres and Balkan-tinged humour) and promotes it in various contexts – for example, at the MERIDIAN International Festival (co-organised with Irinel Anghel, who in 2022 received the RRC Award for Outstanding Musical Event); she admires and seeks out the latter, and has even been fortunate enough to collaborate with some of them (as in this case).

She holds her composition teachers (Ștefan Niculescu, Dan Dediu, Frédéric Durieux) and the students at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she is an Associate Professor, in great esteem, and she is deeply committed to fostering their musical development.