Joanna Bruzdowicz
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Joanna Bruzdowicz (b. May 17, 1943) is one of the rare contemporary composers to have found an original and critically acclaimed voice not only in the world of symphonic and chamber music, but also in opera, television and film.
[edit] Life
Bruzdowicz studied at the Warsaw Music High School, at the State Higher School of Music (composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano with Irena Protasiewicz and Wanda Osakiewicz); she earned her M.A. in 1966.
Pressured and hounded by the communist regime, she traveled to Paris to continue her studies on a scholarship from the French government and became a student of Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer (1968-70). She joined the electro acoustic Groupe de Recherches Musicales and wrote her doctoral thesis Mathematics and Logic in Contemporary Music at the Sorbonne.
After completing her studies in France, she settled in Belgium with her husband, Horst-Jürgen Tittel, former top advisor to the president of the European Commission. Together, they created the 36-episode German TV series Stahlkammer Zürich for which Bruzdowicz wrote over 15 hours of music. They now live in the South of France. They have three sons: Mark, Jan and Jörg Tittel.
[edit] Artistic Range
As a composer she devotes her attention to opera, symphonic and chamber music, works for children, and music for film and television. She wrote four concerti and numerous chamber pieces, as well as over 25 hours of film music. Her compositions are featured on 12 CDs and over 20 LPs; she has been featured in TV programs produced in Belgium, France, Germany and Poland.
Her output includes several operas which brought to the stage some of the greatest works of European literature (e.g. The Penal Colony, after Franz Kafka, 1972; The Women of Troy after Euripides, 1973; and The Gates of Paradise, after Jerzy Andrzejewski, 1987).
Bruzdowicz has a long-standing creative relationship with French film director Agnès Varda, for whom she composed soundtracks for movies from Sans Toit Ni Loi (engl. Vagabond, Golden Lion in Venice, 1985) to Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (engl. The Gleaners and I), her multiple award-winning documentary.
More recently, her music can be heard in her second collaboration with director Yves Angelo, Les Ames Grises (engl. The Grey Souls), the last movie starring the late French comedian Jacques Villeret.
