Alexandros Markeas (born 18 November 1965) is a Franco-Greek composer of instrumental contemporary music.

Life

Born in Athens, Markeas studied at the National Conservatory of Greece. After a year of law studies in Athens he entered the

Conservatoire de Paris The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

(CNSMD) in the class of Gabriel Tacchino and then in that of Alain Planès. In 1990 he was unanimously awarded a First Prize for piano and a year later a First Prize in chamber music, also unanimously awarded by the jury. At the same time, he got interested in music writing and musical composition. He completed his training at the CNSMD with first prizes in counterpoint (1992), fugue (1994) and finally composition (1996), a discipline for which he was admitted to the advanced training cycle. In addition, he was selected to follow the composition and computer music curriculum of the

IRCAM IRCAM (French: ''Ircam, '', English: Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music. It is ...

. In 1998, he participated in the first European Academy of Music of the

Aix-en-Provence Festival The Festival d'Aix-en-Provence is an annual international music festival which takes place each summer in Aix-en-Provence, principally in July. Devoted mainly to opera, it also includes concerts of orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo instrumental ...

where he wrote the music for a

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

. In 2000–2001 he was a resident of the

Villa Medici The Villa Medici () is a Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, ...

. Markeas is part of the heritage of the Parisian spectral school, that of a "processual" music, a music more attached to sound than to the note, gradually moving from one state of the material to another; a music involving a dialectic between harmonic and inharmonic, between periodicity and aperiodicity. To this compositional approach, Alexandros Markeas adds a theatrical dimension, allowing him to escape from "pure music". His compositions are marked by the use of multimedia techniques. At some time he was a professor of generative improvisation at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMD).

Awards

* Prix Hervé Dugardin de la SACEM, 2001 * Prix du syndicat des critiques, 2005 * Prix Nouveau talent musique of the

Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques SACD, founded as Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques ( en, Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers) on 7 March 1829, is a French collecting society, undertaking collective rights management for authors. The Society manages, promotes ...

(SACD), 2009

References

External links

*
Alexandros Markeas
(

France Musique France Musique is a French national public radio channel owned and operated by Radio France. It is devoted to the broadcasting of music, both live and recorded, with particular emphasis on classical music and jazz. History The channel was launch ...

)
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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Markeas, Alexandros 1965 births Living people Musicians from Athens Conservatoire de Paris alumni Academic staff of the Conservatoire de Paris 20th-century French composers 21st-century French composers French classical composers French male classical composers Greek classical composers 20th-century French male musicians 21st-century French male musicians