NTB Conferences

Sunday, March 24, at 11.00, at the NTB's Media Room, Dr. Ilinca Dumitrescu will hold a conference on Classics of Romanian Music - Ion Dumitrescu Centenary (1913 - 1996). Ticket price: 16 lei.    Composer and conductor Ion Dumitrescu at the National Theatre from Bucharest (1940 - 1947) Lectures Dr. Ilinca Dumitrescu, pianist, soloist, musicologist Live musical moment - pieces by Ion Dumitrescu Participates Dr. Vasile Macovei - bassoonist   About the conference Major national and international personality of the Romanian culture, a classic of our music, Ion Dumitrescu (1913 - 1996), composer, teacher, musicologist, conductor, writer, correspondent member of the Institute of France - Academie des Beaux-Arts - and the Academy " Tiberina "from Rome, is commemorated this year at the centenary of his birth. The conference at the National Theatre from Bucharest is included among the various events that will bring to foreground the creator's luminous figure, an innovative and welcomed moment. Ion Dumitrescu was, between 1940 and 1947, composer and conductor of the Orchestra of the National Theatre from Bucharest. He composed the music for over 60 pieces from the national and international repertoire and he collaborated with famous personalities from the theatre of the inter war period, such as directors Ion Sava, Soare Z. Soare and others.   About Ilinca Dumitrescu "An artistic personality of international value, possessing a high-class technique which allows her to approach all styles, genres, schools and sound languages, not knowing boundaries between classical and romantic, modern and contemporary, Ilinca Dumitrescu is a complete artist." ( Viorel Cosma, the Lexicon "Artists from Romania"). The pianist Ilinca Dumitrescu has performed in cities across 5 continents, 40 countries, 33 world capitals, in major concert halls. She studied with famous teachers: Cell Delavrancea and Mihail Jora in Romania, Stanislav Neuhaus and Yakov Flier at the State Conservatory "PI Tchaikovsky "in Moscow, graduating in 1978 with the highest distinction" Certificate of Merit ". She received the most important awards in her home country (the Award of the Romanian Academy - 1995, the Award of the Romanian Cultural Institute - 2003 and so on), but also many international awards (including Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana, 2005, awarded by the President of the Italian Republic. Her artistic activity is carried out in various fields: besides being a soloist pianist (in 1980 she became a state concert soloist), she is also a musicologist (she received the Doctor title at the National University of Music from Bucharest with the highest grade summa cum laude), an educator (she taught master classes in the Czech Republic, USA, Brazil, India, China, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia), a musicologist (between 1994 and 2006 she was the director of the National Museum "George Enescu" from Bucharest), creator and TV producer of the show "Ilinca Dumitrescu and her guests" (the TV channel TvH 2.0 - the former Tv "Romania of Tomorrow"). She has a significant discography, in Romania and the U.S., with works by Scarlatti (the 14 Sonatas were considered in 1986 by the International Record Critics Award, meeting in New York, one of the best albums of the year, standing alongside with those of Emil Gilels, Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia, Bernard Haitink, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostropovici, Placido Domingo, cf. the article "The best records of the year" in the Journal de Genève, July 19, 1986), Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Enescu, etc. Her extremely large repertoire includes performances with an orchestra (great opuses from the classical and romantic creation), pieces of solo recitals (including author programs - Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, Albeniz, Messiaen, Enescu, Jora), chamber music, lieder, with a particular concern in promoting classical and contemporary Romanian music, but also the international works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Recently, Ilinca Dumitrescu received from the French government the high distinction Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, and, in the last days, the Award of the Romanian Musical Forum for her entire activity, after a prestigious artistic career over five decades.   Translated by: Izabella Feher

Sunday, March 10, at 11.00, at the NTB's Small Hall, Acad. Maya Simionescu will hold a conference with the theme A journey in the Land of Science and the World of Cells. Ticket price: 16 lei. About the conference I invite you to get away from everyday life for a while and to travel together to the Land of Science, in which the curious researchers are trying to understand the world around and within us, but also to the World of Cells, a world of small proportions, which you cannot see with the naked eye, but which is as complex and great as the universe. I invite you on a journey into our own universe, populated by 10 -50 trillion cells that work, cooperate, keep us alive and make us what we are. I invite you to be your tour guide in a trip inside a cell, where the miracle of life lies hidden. We chose the itinerary, we only need to pack our bags, to take a map and to go in this fascinating journey. About Acad. Maya Simionescu She is the director of the Institute of Cellular Biology and Pathology "Nicolae Simionescu", member of the Romanian Academy and other Academies and international organizations. She founded in 1979, together with Professor Nicolae Simionescu, the first and only institute of this kind in the country, selected, in the year 2000, as a Centre of Excellence in the European Community. Maya Simionescu worked for 10 years with Prof. George Palade in the U.S. She was a Professor (Visiting Professor) for 20 years at the Yale University and Columbia University in the U.S. She is supervising a small group of talented researchers and is one of the most prominent figures in biomedical research in Romania. Currently, based on the knowledge gained in the country and abroad, Maya Simionescu and her team are trying to figure out how, when and in what way the functions of a normal cell become aberrant and lead to cardiovascular disease - the main cause of death in developed countries, including Romania. She has published over 500 scientific articles in prestigious journals in the world, which have been cited over 6500 times by other researchers. She was awarded with the international prize "Louis and Arthur Lucian for research in circulatory diseases", McGill University, Montreal, Canada; the Sanofi Thrombosis Prize - for research in Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis; the Brazilian Presidency's Order of "Rio Branco - Comendador"; the special UNESCO Award - L'Oreal for Women in Science; the Romanian Presidency's Order of "Faithful Service" - Grand Cross; the National Order "Star of Romania" - in the rank of Grand Officer of the Romanian Presidency; the "Opera Omnia" Prize of the Ministry of Education and Research from Romania and other national and international awards. She is a corresponding member of the Reial Acadèmia de Doctors of Catalonia, Spain, a honorary member of the Academy of Sciences from the Republic of Moldavia, Doctor Honoris Causa of the "Ovidius" University, Constanța, of the University of Medicine "Gr T. Popa", Iași and of the West University, Timişoara.    Translated by: Izabella Feher

Sunday, February 24, at 11.00, at the NTB's Small Hall, Eugen Istodor will hold a conference on Lipscani - Travel & Party Guide. Ticket price: 16 lei. About the conference The world of conquests, legends and the horrific world of disaster. Three worlds in one: Lipscani, the historic centre, Bucharest's old centre. Come with me to my Lipscani! I will tell you about it as I know it best. I wrote the only book about the human part of Lipscani. Today, not even the disasters of the past that have terrified Lipscani, do not hold a great significance; they can only be gentle reprimands and pale rummages of our consciousness. But they talk about the issue and irresponsibility of those who have conquered the nowadays Lipscani with beaneries and music. Come and hear what brings luck in Lipscani. Ascensions and decays, pride and bankruptcy standing wall to wall and so they grew together: the Royal Court and the shops from Lipscani. Traces of that world still exist. We can revive this bustle for worldliness by listening to the history of Lipscani and the royalty. Because the Lipscani area gives birth to so many passions, we will revive its legends. From the cafes prohibited by Phanariots because they were breeding grounds for gossip and rumours there is only one left on Covaci Street. From the prostitution and bohemia on Șelari Street the story of Zaraza and Cristian Vasile is still vivid in our memories. The easiness of being was a delight during the interwar period: sirloins on the grill, the troubling wine and the easy women that could be found at every corner. This gaiety is prolonged even nowadays. Today and always the Lipscani area has its own law: the legend. Together we will see who and how the legendary Lipscani was spun. About Eugene Istodor Born in 1965, he graduated the Faculty of Letters at the University of Bucharest. He permanently writes columns in weekly magazines like Caţavencii and Dilema Veche. He taught interview, reportage and blogging classes at the Centre for Independent Journalism (1997-2002), he was a collaborator at Cotidianul (2004-2009) and he had his own TV shows at Realitatea TV and TVR, as well as shows at various radio stations. He published the following volumes: Interviews against Nature (interviews with politicians), Nemira Publishing House, 1997; People I would Gladly Die With (interviews with ordinary people), Nemira Publishing House, 2000; The Lifers from Rahova (interviews with prisoners serving a life sentence at the Rahova prison), Polirom Publishing House, 2005 (nominated at the Union of Writers's awards); The Book of my Life. Şulea 31, N3, sc. 2. During Communism (oral histories from the Ceauşescu regime, gathered from the staircase of my childhood), Polirom Publishing House, 2007; Dictionary of Fixed Ideas. After 20 Years (analysis and synthesis of the facts and ideas that have animated the Romanian society from the revolution to the present), Polirom Publishing House, 2009; Lipscani. Travel & Party Guide (a peek into the past and the nowadays life of Bucharest's old centre), Art Publishing House, 2011, 101 Romanian Books to Read in a Lifetime (the history of Romanian literature in an unbiased and current selection), Polirom Publishing House, 2012.   Translated by: Izabella Feher

Sunday, February 10, at 11.00, at the NTB's Small Hall, Dan Lungu will hold a conference on the theme About the "communist biddies' " nostalgia and other demons. Ticket price: 16 lei. About the Conference "I do not know if I'm a communist biddy! is my best book, but it certainly had the largest impact from everything I wrote. At no moment did I imagine the fate these lines would have, writing meticulously in my small room from rue Ribera, at the Romanian Greek-Catholic Mission in Paris, where I wrote most of the book. I don't want to talk at this conference about the unpredictable literary success of the novel. Rather, I would tell you about how I began to understand the past, exploring "the communist biddies'" nostalgia and its roots, as well as how working on this book and the European journey undertaken to write it have changed my way of thinking and my literary career. Finally, I would like to relate how men and women, Romanian or foreign, reacted when they bumped into my "communist biddy", as shown by the hundreds of messages received in the last years or the talks with them. It is certain that the "communist biddies'" nostalgia hit much farther than it seems at first glance. How far? Come to NTB and we'll talk! " About Dan Lungu Born in 1969 in Botosani, lecturer at the Department of Sociology, the "Al. I. Cuza" University from Iași. He is one of the most appreciated and most translated writers of the new generation, his books being published in ten languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Slovenian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish. He did postdoctoral studies in sociology at the Sorbonne and was editor of the magazine Au Sud de l'Est (Paris). In 1996 he initiated in Iași the literary group Club 8. In 2001 and 2002 he was the editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine Timpul. In 2005 he is one of the Romanian writers invited to "Les belles étrangères", France. At Polirom he published two volumes of short stories, Boys in a gang (2005) and Retail Prose (Second Edition, 2008) and the novels I am a communist biddy! (First edition, 2007, second edition, 2010, third edition, 2011; the book had a film adaptation directed by Stere Gulea, having as protagonists Luminița Gheorghiu, Marian Râlea and Ana Ularu, its French version was nominated twice for the Jean Monnet European Prices, France, 2008), How to forget a woman (first edition, 2009, second edition, 2010, third edition, 2011) and All light bulbs are burned in Hell (2011). Also for Polirom he coordinated, with Radu Pavel Gheo, the collective volume Female Comrades on the Road. The Feminine experience in Communism (2008), and with Lucian Dan Teodorovici - Revolution Street no. 89 (2009). His plays Knife to the bone (Green Hours, Monday Theatre, 2002), Wedding at the ground floor (a reading-show at the Odeon Theatre, 2003; a reading-show at the Luceafărul Theater, Iași, 2006, within the DramatIS Project) and  A greedy witch (a children's play, the Luceafărul  Theater, Iași, 2008) were staged. The play Happy birthday!, This is what one should say, right? was one of the winners of the new texts Grant at Dramafest, the 2008 edition. He is awarded with the Prize of the Junimea Society for his literary activity for 1993, the Nemira Publishing House's Award for short stories (1997), the USR Award, the Dobrogea branch, for his debut in prose (1999), the Goethe Zentrum Award for promoting originality, representing Club 8 (2001 ), the USR Award, the Iași Branch, for prose (2005), the Iași Municipality Town Hall's "Vasile Pogor" Prize for his literary activity(2007), Cultural Personality of the Year (2009), the USR Award, the Iași Branch, for fiction (2010), the Young Writer's Colloquy Prize for prose (Alba Iulia, 2011). In 2011 the French government awarded him the title of "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" for his contributions to the enrichment of the French cultural heritage. He is a member of the Writers' Union of Romania.   Data taken from www.polirom.ro Photo Matei Bejenaru   Translated by: Izabella Feher

Sunday, January 27, at 11.00, at the NTB’s Small Hall, Prof. Dr. Mircea Beuran will hold a conference on Polytrauma - actuality and attitude. Ticket price: 16 lei. About the conference Physical trauma, part of our everyday life, is the main cause of death in young people and adults. Is it national ignorance? Polytrauma, according to the current definition, is equivalent to the most severe forms, life-threatening and difficult recovery. From this point of view, the complete early diagnosis and the treatment need to be organized in precise and algorithmic concepts. Variations from one country to another are primarily dictated by the financial resources, but also by mentalities that need to be changed. - Prof. Mircea Beuran "Those who ignore history must be prepared to repeat it." - George Santayana About Prof. Dr. Mircea Beuran He is a physician and surgeon, an academic professor at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy "Carol Davila" Bucharest, Chief of Surgery at the Emergency Clinic Hospital Bucharest, President of the Romanian Society of Surgery, the Bucharest branch and of the Society of Emergency Surgery and Traumatology from Romania. He is also a doctor of Medicine since 1999. Since September 2007, he is a professor of surgery at the International School of Surgical Oncology affiliated with IASGO. He was the Health Minister in 2003. His field of competence includes trauma surgery, oncologic surgery, laparoscopic surgery. Published books Handbook of Surgery - Mircea Beuran (as editor) – The Publishing House of the „Carol Davila" University, Bucharest, 2003. Practical works - Mircea Beuran (as editor), The Publishing House of the "Carol Davila" University Bucharest, 2005. He is also the coauthor of numerous books, studies and surgical treatises. The National Order "Star of Romania", with the title of Knight, 2002.   Translated by: Izabella Feher

The National Theatre from Bucharest announces the restart of the series of conferences initiated in 2006, in a debate meant to mark the end of the Caragiale Year. Sunday, 2nd December, at 11.00, at the Small Hall, will take place the conference on the theme I.L. Caragiale: actuality and actualization held by Ioana Pârvulescu and Dan C. Mihăilescu, in a dialogue moderated by Ion Caramitru. Two admirers and authentic connoisseurs of Caragiale's life and work, Ioana Pârvulescu and Dan C. Mihăilescu will show why Caragiale's writing lasts one century after his death and where we are positioned, nowadays, in relation to the great writer who intercepted the essence of the derisory and absurd theatre named Romania. About Ioana Pârvulescu She is an academic lecturer at the Faculty of Letters from Bucharest, where she teaches modern Romanian literature. For 18 years she was an editor at România literară. She initiated and was in charge of the "Night Table Books" collection at Humanitas Publishing House. She is a passionate reader of journals, memoirs, letters and newspaper type documents, from which she recreates lost worlds. She wrote several essay books, reedited several times, among which Return to the Interwar Bucharest (2003), In the Intimacy of the 19th Century (2005), The Book of Questions (2010). The author's concern with Caragiale materialized in two essays: In the Land of Mitică: Seven Times Caragiale (2008) and The World as a Newspaper. The fourth power: Caragiale (2011). The novel Life begins on Friday (2009) was published in 2011 in a Swedish translation as well. The most recent book published by the author about Bucharest is the novel The Future Begins on Monday (2012). About Dan C. Mihăilescu Born in 1953, he is a critic, literary historian, and translator. He is a researcher at the History and Literary Theory Institute "G. Călinescu" (1980 - 2003), a secretary in the editorial board of the Magazine of History and Literary Theory (1983 - 1986), the editor of the supplement Letters, Arts, Ideas of the newspaper Cotidianul (1991 - 1996, 2001 - 2004), and starting from the year 2000 the author of the show The Man who Brings the Book, at ProTV (the Prize of the National Audiovisual Council in 2003). He is also a literary reviewer at the magazines Transilvania, 22, Ziarul de duminică, Jurnalul naţional, Evenimentul zilei. He made his editorial debut in 1982, with the volume Perspectives on Eminescu (the Union of Writers' prize for debut, reedited at Humanitas, 2006), followed by Lucian Blaga's Dramaturgy (1984), Questions of Poetry (1989), Right wing left-handedness (1999), Cut book (2003), Pleasure Writings (2004), Post Communist Romanian Literature (vol. I, 2004, vol. II, 2006, vol. III, 2007), Straightening the Left (2005), Literary Life (vol. I, 2005, vol. II, 2006), Dancing on Ruins (2006), Nicked ideas (2008), About the Man in the Letters. Mihai Eminescu (2009). He made the anthologies I. L. Caragiale about the World, Arts and the Romanian People (2012), I. L. Caragiale. The Most Beautiful Letters (2012) and he is the author of the volume I. L. Caragiale and the Calligraphy of Pleasure (2012).   Translated by: Izabella Feher

Sunday, 3rd June, at 11.00, at the National Theatre's Amphitheatre Hall, Mihai Stănescu will hold a conference with the theme 100% Humour. The price of a ticket is 23 and 10 lei.   About the conference Mihai Stănescu, established as the most redoubtable caricaturist from before '89, when he was interdicted, will close the present season of the National Theatre's Conferences with a discussion about humour, satire and irony, about the subjects at which Romanians still laugh or if jokes are still made nowadays. The artist will offer autographs on 100 Best of Stănescu and Code Orange albums, which he will give to the participants at the conference.          Translated by: Izabella Feher MTTLC, Bucharest University

Sunday 27th May, at 11.00, at the National Theatre's Black Box, Ion Vianu will hold the conference entitled Carl Gustav Jung, a thinker of the crossroads. The price of a ticket is 23 or 10 lei. About the conference The conference offers a closer look on the life and work of the great founder of analytical psychology, of the influences which crossed him, of the crossroad character of his work, where science meets religion, agnosticism meets mysticism, tradition meets modernity. The conference examines the extent in which Jung's inheritance could contribute to the salvation of the "profound man", who is opposed to the contemporary flat and superficial individual. Jung could become an even more important reference for the 21st century than he was for the preceding one.  About Ion Vianu Psychiatrist, essayist, novelist, born in Bucharest in 1934. The son of Tudor Vianu. Unfinished classical studies. PhD. in medicine, psychiatrist for 40 years: in Romania, where he had academic positions, and in Switzerland, as a practitioner. He emigrated in 1977 and was active, in exile, amongst the movement for human rights and against the political usage of psychiatry, by publishing and working at Radio Free Europe. His publishing activity, in favour of human rights, also continues after the revolution, in Romania. As an essayist he made his debut with the volume Style and Person (1975), being influenced of psychoanalysis but unlisted in a psychoanalytic society. As a memorialist he wrote Remembrances in Dialogue (1994), together with Matei Călinescu. He initiates a cycle of novels with the title The Archive of Treason and Wrath, from which The Notebooks of Ozias (2004) and Vasiliu, Loose Leaves (2006) were published. The project, which will be finished with a third book is meant to be a description of the past century, especially of its second half. Another novel, Paramnesias, with an autobiographical note, was published in 2005. He is a member of the Group for Social Dialogue, senator of the Civic Alliance. In 2009 he publishes Exercises in Sincerity, an account of his civic involvement from the seventies. In 2010 he publishes a new autobiographical novel, Amor Intellectualis, which România literară designated as the Book of the Year 2010; also for this novel, the author received the prize of Excellency Opera omnia offered by Radio Romania Cultural as well as the prize for memoirs of the magazine Observator Cultural, and the Special Prize of the Union of Writers for the year 2010. Also in 2010 the Spanish translation of the novel Vasiliu, Loose Leaves/ Vasiliu, hojas sueltas, made by Ioana Zlotescu, was published.   Photo Cristea Enache   Translated by: Izabella Feher MTTLC, Bucharest University                   

Sunday 20th May, at 11.00, at the National Theatre's Black Box, the Academician Solomon Marcus will hold a conference with the title The Need for Entertainment. The price for a ticket is 23 or 10 lei.   About the conference   Everything that stirs the attention, everything that surprises or enchants is entertainment. Sometimes we look for it, other times it takes us by surprise. As soon as people forget their worries, many fall into boredom. The salvation? In entertainment. Potentially, it is everywhere. But how many of us are able to see it? There are too many who look for it in the oblivious, even trivial part of life. Is there an alternative? An incursion in history and a radiography of the present can help us. Acad. Solomon Marcus   About Acad. Solomon Marcus He was born on the 1st March 1925, in Bacău. Mathematician, tenured member of the Romanian Academy, consultant professor at the University of Bucharest. Research and didactic activities in mathematical analysis, theoretic computer sciences, linguistics, semiotics, poetics, mathematic applications in natural and social sciences, philosophy and history of science. He published in these areas  tens of books in Romanian, English, French, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Serbian-Croatian, Czech and Greek and several hundreds of articles in specialty magazines from all the five continents. He is recognized as one of the initiators of mathematical linguistics and mathematical poetics. He is a member in the editorial committees of tens of national and international  magazines, among which International Journal of Computer Mathematics, Fundamenta Informaticae, Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences, Poetics Today. He was a guest professor or held conferences at universities from North and South America, Asia and Oceania. Invited protractor at numerous international scientific meetings. Author of a great number of articles published in cultural magazines, in which he advocates for an integrating attitude, that permits the exchange between all disciplines, going beyond any fragmentary vision and discovering the human fund of knowledge and behavior. On these lines, he proposes a new reading of history of science and, especially, of the history of Romanian mathematics. His books and articles were read by over a thousand authors, among which some of the most respectable representatives of the domains in which he worked. The contextual grammars, which he introduced in 1969, bare his name and were the object of tens of studies, among which is also a book with the title Marcus contextual grammars, published in 1997 at the Dutch publishing house Kluwer. For his pioneering work in mathematical linguistic and mathematical poetics and for other results, he was mentioned in general knowledge encyclopedias like "Brockhaus", "Larousse", "Enciclopedia Einaudi", "Encyclopaedia Universalis", "Great Soviet Encyclopedia", "Enciclopedia Italiana" as well as in mathematics, computer science, cybernetic, linguistic, semiotics, literary theory and global issues of mankind dictionaries and encyclopedias. He formed a great number of disciples, who had him as a PhD. coordinator; some of them gained a worldwide fame and formed disciples of their own. Solomon Marcus is the disciple of two great professors, Miron Nicolescu and Grigore C. Moisil; he has in mind to continue their tradition, as well as that of other great figures of Romanian mathematics. The most recent publications: Mathematics in Romania (2004),CUB Press 22; The Meeting of Extremities (2005), Universal Paradigms (2005), Universal Paradigms II; Starting from a Smile (2006), Universal Paradigms III; The Game (2007), Paralela 45 Publishing House; "Words and languages everywhere", Polimetrica - International Scientific Publisher, Milano. Coordinator and co-author at Grigore C. Moisil And His Followers (2007), The Romanian Academy's Publishing House.        Other publications: Mathematical Analysis (in collaboration.), Ed. Didactică şi Pedagogică, vol.1, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1971, 1980; vol.2,1966, 1971,1980; Grammars and Finite Automata, Ed. Academiei Române, 1964; Algebraic Linguistics; Analytical Models, Academic Press, New York and London, 1967; Introduction mathematique a la linguistique structurale, Dunod, Paris, 1967; Introduzione alla linguistica matematica (in collaboration), Casa editrice Riccardo Patron, Bologna, 1970; Mathematische Poetik, Athenaeum Verlag, Frankfurt/Main, 1973; From the Romanian Mathematical Thinking, Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, 1975; La semiotique formelle du folklore (in collaboration) Klincksieck, Paris, 1978; Contextual ambiguities in natural and in artificial languages (in collaboration.), Communication and Cognition, Ghent, Belgium, vol. 1, 1981, vol.2, 1983; The Paradox, Ed. Albatros, 1984; Time, Ed. Albatros, 1985; Arts and Sciences, Ed. Eminescu, 1986; The Mathematical Shock, Ed. Albatros, 1987; Invention and Discovery, Ed. Cartea Românească, 1989; Language, Logic, Cognition and Communication, Report 9/96, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, 1996.   Translated by: Izabella Feher MTTLC, Bucharest University

Sunday 6th Mai, at 11.00, at the National Theatre's Black Box, Dan Dediu will hold a conference on the theme About travesty in music. Ticket prices: 23 and 10 lei.   About the conference Is it possible to imagine the travesty in some other way than metaphorically outside the theater? Probably not. But because theatre meets music in opera, then music can dare to take over the travesty and extend it into the area of sounds. Starting from the idea that the travesty is an unsuitability between what we see and what we hear, Dan Dediu researches its various facades in music. The defining area of this unsuitability is the one of the sexes: to look like a woman and talk like a man or to look like a man and talk like a woman are phenomena that surely create a tensioned waiting for the audience. But if we dig further and ask: if we do not talk but sing, isn't this initial unsuitability a shocking contradiction between how we look and how we sing? Firstly, the travesty is differentiated from disguise and various examples from the opera's tradition are reeled out (the castrated boys from the baroque opera, the travesty of Mozart and Beethoven, and of Richard Strauss). Afterwards a jump is made to the speculation of music with the help of music's definition as theatre of affects, and the role of the two sexes is taken over by the vocal and instrumental music genres. The journey goes on in an unexpected manner, revealing dazzling travesties, methods of concealing the essence, immersions in the double musical memory and many other ideational recesses, which eagerly wait to be brought into light.   About Dan Dediu Dan Dediu (1967) studied composition in Bucharest with Ştefan Niculescu and Dan Constantinescu, and in Vienna with Francis Burt. Various creation and research grants (Herder and A. Berg - Vienna, Ircam - Paris, New Europe College- Bucharest, The College of Science - Berlin, Villa Concordia - Bamberg) had a decisive role in his evolution as a composer. More than 130 opuses which cover almost every musical genre: 4 symphonies and other pieces for orchestra (Narcotic Spaces, Ornements, Studii-Motto, The Fear, Frenesia, Mantrana, Grana, Verva), 5 concerts (saxophone, viola, violin, piano), 4 string quartets, chamber music in various bands, piano music, choirs, electronic music, 4 operas (Post-fiction, Münchhausen, Eva!, The Lost Letter). National and International prizes for composition and performance (Vienna, Dresden, Paris, Berlin, Ludwigshafen, 9 prizes from the UCMR, The Romanian Academy's Prize, The Enescu Prize). He also presided various festivals, ensembles and renowned musicians. Published by the Musical Publishing House, Peermusic (Hamburg - New York), Lucian Badian Editions (Ottawa). His works are available on CDs in Romania (The Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company, The Musical Publishing House), Germany (Pro Viva, Cavalli Records, Neos), Australia (Move Records), Holland (NM Extra).        He also published two monographies (about Ludovic Feldman and Dan Constantinescu - the latter one together with Valentina Sandu-Dediu), an essay volume (Radicalisation and guerilla), as well as many studies, articles and conferences. Between 2003 and 2006 he made for TVR 88 episodes for the initiation in music series "The adventure of sounds", for which he received the ATF prize for the year 2004, and 12 episodes for the series "Music from an exhibition" (2008 - 2009). He is Officer of the "For Learning" Order and Knight of the "Cultural Merit" Order. He coordinated, as an art director, the Week of New Music Festival (editions from 1999, 2001, 2007 and 2008) and the Profil Festival (editions from 2004 and 2006). Dan Dediu is a composition professor, he was the head of the composition department from the National University of Music from Bucharest, he is the art director of the Profil ensemble, and at present he is the rector of the National University of Music from Bucharest. His music generates energy, clarity of expression, melodic-harmonic assuredness, based on a versatile sense of instrumental forms and colours, as well as on an aesthetic oscillation between playfulness and tragedy. The typical sonority of his compositions is defined by many elements: a capricious staccato, unforeseeable disposition shifts, temporality crossovers, rich associative imagery, conspicuous and memorable melodic motifs, precise psychological definitions realized with only a few sounds.   Translated by: Izabella Feher MTTLC, Bucharest University