Miroslav Srnka

Miroslav Srnka was born in Prague in 1975.

He studied musicology at the Charles University in Prague with Jarmila Gabrielová (1993–99) and composition at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts with Milan Slavický (1998–2003).
Study trips took him to the Humboldt University in Berlin 1995-96 and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris in 2001.

He has participated in exchange programmes and composition courses with Ivan Fedele in 2002, Philippe Manoury in 2004 and others.

He received the Gideon Klein Award in 2001 as well as the Leoš Janácek Anniversary Prize in 2004, Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prize in 2009 and Wilfried-Steinbrenner-Stiftung Prize in 2009.

In 2005 his short opera “Wall” after Jonathan Safran Foer was premiered at the Berlin State Opera.

He was “Composer for Heidelberg” at the Theater und Philharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg in 2006-07.

In 2011, his chamber opera Make No Noise was premiered at the Munich Opera Festival and his children's "comics" Jakub Flügelbunt in Semperoper Dresden.

In 2016, the dual opera South Pole on a libretto by Tom Holloway was premiered at Bavarian State Opera in Munich, with Rolando Villazón as Scott, Thomas Hampson as Amundsen, conducted by Kirill Petrenko and staged by Hans Neuenfels.

South Pole was nominated for the International Opera Award, named as one of the three best new operas of the year by the German magazine Opernwelt and enjoyed a new production in Darmstadt in 2017.

The season 2018/2019 brings new collaborations with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Susanna Mälkki, Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Jörg Widmann, Mahan Esfahani and others.

His compositions have been commissioned, premiered or performed by leading interpreters

such as the Ensemble Intercontemporain with Claron McFadden and David Robertson, Klangforum Wien with Sylvain Cambreling and Clement Power, Ensemble Modern with Franck Ollu, Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks with Matthias Pintscher, BBC Philharmonic with Cornelius Meister, Staatskapelle Dresden with Tomáš Hanus, Munich Chamber Orchestra with Alexander Liebreich, PKF - Prague Philharmonia with Jakub Hrůša, Beethovenorchester Bonn with Dirk Kaftan, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien with Nicolas Hodges, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie with Aziz Shokhakimov, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo with Pierre-André Valade, Prague Modern with Pascal Gallois, Ostravská Banda with Peter Rundel and Petr Kotík, ensemble recherche, Quatuor Diotima, Arditti Quartet, Zebra Trio, Annsi Karttunen with Magnus Lindberg, Dagmar Pecková with Eric Nielsen, Francesco Dillon with Emanuele Torquati, Jiří Bárta with Jana Boušková, Saar Berger,
and at festivals including Prague Spring, Musica Strasbourg, Ultraschall Berlin, Wien Modern, Présences Paris, Milano Musica, Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo, Bregenzer Festspiele, Musikprotokoll / Steirischer Herbst Graz, Arcana St. Gallen, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Ostrava New Music Days, Contempuls Prague and others.

Miroslav Srnka is currently the chairman of the Czech Philharmonic Composition Competition and member of the artistic board of Prague Spring Festival.

Miroslav Srnka is one of the founding members of Prague Modern Ensemble, he was a member of the board of directors of the Leoš Janáček Foundation in Brno. Srnka is a regular guest at the Charles University Prague since 2001. He gave composition masterclasses at the Lucerne School of Music (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts), Moscow Conservatory and participated on the "Klassenarbeit" project of ensemble recherche in Freiburg. For several years, he was appointed as an editor of two music magazines and as a managing director of the largest Czech classical music publishing house. He was involved in the development of the critical editions of Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů.

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