Carmen Maria Cârneci

From 1976 to1981 Carmen Maria Cârneci studied composition and conducting in Bucharest/Romania. After maticulating, she continued her studies in Freiburg/Germanywith Klaus Huber and Francis Travis, participated in conducting courses with Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös and others, and already gained several prizes and awards. Since 1986 she had numerous conducting engagements: at the Donaueschingen Festival in 1989 and 1992, regular guest conductor at the State Opera and the Chamber Theatre in Stuttgart, where she gave the premiere performance of Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Perseo e Andromeda”, also conducting the first Italian performance at Gibellina, and subsequent performances in Milan. In 1993 she was guest conductor at the “Neues Theater für Musik” in Bonn, where she also gave the premiere of her chamber opera Giacometti in March 1996.
From 1990 to1991 she conducted the Freiburg Academic Orchestra; in 1992 she was director of the ”Rossini in Wildbad” festival. While in Freiburg, she also founded the vocal ensemble ”Coloratura”. As a composer, she receives grants, awards and commissions from important institutions and festivals. Since 1994 she has been involved in the administration and program-plannning of the “profectio inititive freiburg” ensemble as conductor and co-organizer. She is currently working as a freelance composer and conductor. She lives in Freiburg and in Bucharest where she teaches at the Music Academy. Despite or because of her split existence since the mid-eighties, living sometimes in Freiburg, sometimes in Bucharest, with all the see-sawing of outlooks and aesthetic perceptions that entails, Carmen Maria Cârneci has drawn back, and made the striving for her own inner truth the central focus of her work. A truth that can only exist and be discovered at the core of the artistically active ego, between past and future, vision and reality, artistic individuality and perceptions of the surrounding world.