Gábor Tarján

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Gábor Tarján (musical director/composer) was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1967. Four years later, he and his family fled to Canada. In 1990, Tarjan received a Bachelor of Music degree in Percussion Performance with Honours from the University of Toronto where his teachers included Russell Hartenberger and Robin Engelman of the percussion ensemble Nexus. Directly following graduation, he spent 6 months as an “artist in residence” at the Banff Centre for the Arts. In 1991 Tarján continued his studies at the Utrecht Conservatory of Music, and two years later was awarded a Performance Diploma with a special distinction for theatrical qualities. He has studied tabla with Sandip Bhattacharya and frame drumming with Glen Velez.

As a former member of the Japanese percussion group Circle Percussion, Tarján performed regularly with the renowned Nederlands Dans Theater in Japan, Israel, Europe and the United States. In 1994, he performed the world premiere of a 70-minute theater piece for solo tympanist entitled, “Om mij mijzelf met mijn aan mezelf en mezelf en mijn eigen” by the dutch composer Jan van de Putte who also dedicated the piece to Tarján. Tarjan was nominated in 2004 by the Dutch Society of Composers (GENECO) for the Henriette Bosmans Prize for young composers.

For the past 14 years, Gabor Tarjan has been based in the Netherlands and is active as a composer, percussionist and actor, and sometimes all three at the same time. He has composed the music for at least 13 successful music-theatre productions with Het Filiaal. His solo-percussion score for “Captain Lindbergh’s Oceanflight” won the award for “best sound design” when it was performed by the Metro Theater Company in St. Louis, MO. Tarjan’s music has been performed by the Evergreen Club Gamelan Ensemble, Arraymusic, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, and the YO Opera Festival. In February 2006, he performed as Baron Rabinovitsj for two weeks on Broadway in the New Victory Theater,^[1] and the show toured in Canada, Macau and Hong Kong.^[2]

Tarján’s most recent work includes the score for Het Filiaal’s large venue production of Catherine Catherine in the Goose Game and Als je weet waar ik ben zoek me dan, a large-scale work for chamber choir, strings and percussion based on the poetry of Lucebert. Het Filiaal has released 2 cd’s of Tarjan’s music: Moezyka!, with the music of Baron Rabinovitsj, and When I dream…, a collection of 24 theater songs.

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