Ink Still Wet

Patrik Kako (1998) studies composition at the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in the class of Luboš Mrkvička, Michal Rataj and (Hanuš Bartoň 2017-2019), he participated in the Erasmus exchange program at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" in Leipzig, in the class of Fabien Lévy and electro-acoustic music with Prof. Ipke Starke. 

Patrik Kako (1998) studies composition at the faculty of music at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in the class of Luboš Mrkvička, Michal Rataj and (Hanuš Bartoň 2017-2019), he participated in the Erasmus exchange program at the University of Music and Theatre «Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy» in Leipzig in the class of Fabien Lévy and electroacoustic music with Prof. Ipke Starke. 

His current compositional work is based on the principles of analysis and various transformations of sound recordings, the result of which serves as inspiring, coherent material in various elements. The result of the analysis is combined at various points in the traditional composition (instrumentation, combination of instruments, chordal timing, etc.). The formal aspect is the simultaneous combination of multiple harmonic layers and their realization over time. In his work we can hear a summary of avant-garde information from the second half of the twentieth century, a post-Webern tradition and also inspirations from spectral music. An integral part of his work is the use of advanced tool techniques and their hierarchization in the compositional process.

Since 2020, he has been leading the student ensemble Ensemble Terrible, with whom he premiered his chamber opera finitika, a chamber opera about the end of human evolution. A recent success was the guest performance by soloist Martin Adámek. In 2022, he presented two projects with 12 new works by composers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the USA. He led the project eroica > re:destructed, in which he performed new compositions of Beethoven's Eroica.

Professional experience

• Cooperation with the Klangforum Wien (Prague offspring 2022), MDI ensemble (masterclasses with F. Bedrossian + Marco Stroppa (june 2023), Festival Mixtur (2023). Compositional - orchestra experiences - Philharmonic Hradec Králove (2021), North Czech Philharmonic (2020). 
   
• Director and conductor - Ensemble Terrible (2020—2023), where I composed a chamber opera .finitika (2020), and created a dramaturgy plan (new composition of Beethovens Eroica).
   
• His compositions are being regularly performed at various Slovakian and Czech festivals, such as Asynchronie, a project of SOUNDME. Recently, his audiovisual compositions were performed in concerts by the Swedish group FMT Musik-SPETRA in Sweden, Brazil, and Malaysia.
   
• Masterclass: Frank Bedrossian, Hector Parra, Tristan Murial, Mark André, Miguel Azguime, Marco Stroppa, Ivo Medek, Anders Flodin, etc.

Marco Longo (1979) is an Italian composer and pianist. His musical catalogue includes chamber works, orchestral compositions, solo pieces and music for theatre.

His works have been played in several concerts and festivals in Europe, USA and China, like Festival Pontino (Latina), Nuove Musiche (Treviso), GAMO (Firenze), Rondò (Milano), Mondi Sonori (Trento), Mixtur (Barcelona), Mostra Sonora de Sueca (Valencia), New Music Miami, Mise- en Festival (New York), Sun River Prize (Chengdu - Cina), Noisy Nights (Scotland), Festival 5 Giornate (Milano), Matinée dell'Accademia (Roma), Cluster (Lucca), Accademia Filarmonica Romana (Roma), Nuova Consonanza (Roma), Festival Il Suono, ISCM 2018 World New Music Days (Beijing), NOSPR (Katowice), Echoes of Time (Miami) International Review of Composers (Belgrade), Encuentros Sonoros (Sevilla), Twin Cities Contemporary Music Festival (USA), Weimarer Früjahrstage, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Centro Cultural de Belem (Portugal) etc. 

Ensembles and soloists who have performed his works include Divertimento Ensemble, Dedalo Ensemble, SurPlus, AlterEgo, dissonArt, l’Arsenale, PMCE, Vertixe Sonora, mise-en ensemble, Nodus, Red Note ensemble, Tokyo Nomad ensemble, NewMade ensemble, Ensemble Suonogiallo, Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej, Imago Sonora, via nova ensemble, Tokyo Sinfonietta, Icarus vs. Muzak, Grupo Musica Contemporanea Lisboa, Alda Caiello, Maria Grazia Bellocchio, Francesco Gesualdi, Dario Savron, Marco Fusi.

He won prizes and honor mentions at several national and international composition competitions: the National Prize of Arts, “Premio Bucchi” (Roma), “A. Manoni” competition, G.A.M.’s Composition Competition (Milano), Jeunesse Musical Competition (Bucarest), MeA Competition (Roma), AFAM Competition (Milano), “...a Camillo Togni” International Competition (Brescia), Sun River Prize (China), NewMade Week (Milano), "L. Nono" Competition (Torino), International Wroclaw Orchestra Competition (Poland), Premio Evangelisti (Roma), Irino Prize (Tokyo), Weimar Composition Competition (Germany), “J.Peixinho” Competition (Lisboa).

His music has been broadcasted by Rai RadioTre and RadioClassica.

He is founder of MotoContrario, a musical ensemble and a collective of composers and performers, based in Trento (Italy), born for the study and the divulgation of the contemporary repertoire.

He earned the Piano Diploma and the Composition Diploma at the State Conservatory in Trento, his hometown.
Then he has improved his knowledge of composition with Azio Corghi and Mauro Bonifacio in Siena (Accademia Chigiana), in Brescia (Romanini Foundation) and in Bologna (Philarmonic Academy). He took also part in seminars and masterclass held by A. Solbiati, S. Gervasoni and N. Vassena.
He was admitted at the Schloss Solitude Summer Academy in Stuttgart, (Chaya Czernowin, Steven Takasugi and Amnon Wolman); he attended the 46th Summer Courses in Darmstadt and the 8th Impuls Academy in Graz, following especially the classes of Pierluigi Billone.
He has earned the Composition Diploma at S.Cecilia Academy in Roma, under the guide of Ivan Fedele.

Since his youth, he dedicated himself to teaching: he received a two-years training in piano teaching at Trento Conservatory and he has taught piano, chamber music and ear training at several music schools. He earned a Didactic Master Diploma in piano and the State Teaching Qualification.
He taught Score Reading at Conservatory in La Spezia and in Sassari; currently he teaches Composition at Reggio Emilia Conservatory.

Franziska Roth started her musical education at the age of 16 with private violin and piano lessons from Peter Czerner and Sándor Galgoczi.  As a young adult, she developed an increasing interest in composing out of an existing enthusiasm for creative design in words and drawings.

In 2015, she enrolled at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, first for the preparatory course in composition, before taking up the regular composition course with Prof. Herbert Lauermann a year later and then with Prof. Detlev Müller-Siemens, graduating in 2023. Her works are beeing performed by ensembles such as the Platypus Ensemble, the Pro Arte Orchester Wien and the Vogl String Trio in the context of Wien Modern and the Alte Schmiede Wien, among others.

In 2017, Franziska Roth started her artistic violin studies at the Joseph Haydn Conservatory in Eisenstadt with Prof. Cornelia Gradwohl and Prof. Florian Wilscher, which she completed in 2022 with her first diploma. Her particular focus in her repertoire selection is on the development of contemporary works. She was able to gain professional orchestral experience through her participation in the Pro Arte Orchestra Vienna, the Imperial Classic Orchestra and the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich.

The music of American composer Matthew Schultheis (b. 1997) is driven by a love of visual art and literature, a preference for dramatic, rich, sometimes opulent textures, a reverence for present-day musicians’ inheritance of past musical idioms, and a fascination with the connections performers and listeners make between deeply familiar and newly-heard pieces.

Born in the Washington, D.C. area and based in New York City, Matthew is a C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School, having completed his master's degree there in 2022. He has studied with Matthias Pintscher since 2020. He earned his BM in composition, additionally studying piano full-time, at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. 

Matthew has collaborated with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra; Attacca, Mivos, JACK, and Hausmann Quartets; IU New Music Ensemble; Ensemble intercontemporain, and Sound Icon. He has participated in summer festivals at Bowdoin College, the Brevard Music Center, New Music On the Point, SUNY-Purchase (with the National Youth Orchestra) and the EAMA–Nadia Boulanger Institute. Upcoming projects in the 2022–23 season include commissions from Ensemble intercontemporain, Giancarlo Latta of the Argus Quartet, and the New York Virtuoso Singers.

Matthew’s music has received three consecutive BMI Student Composer Awards and additional honors from ASCAP, the Society of Composers, Inc., the Music Teachers National Association, and the IU composition department. In 2021, his first work for orchestra, Columbia, In Old Age, received the Palmer Dixon Prize from The Juilliard School for most outstanding work of the year.

An accomplished pianist dedicated to performing new music, Matthew has frequently premiered his own works throughout his time as a student, in addition to giving recitals of music in the standard repertoire. He was a member and frequent featured soloist of the Indiana University New Music Ensemble from 2016–2019. Performances as a soloist with that ensemble include György Ligeti's Piano Concerto (2018), the American premiere of Bernd Richard Deutsch's Mad Dog (2017), and Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez's concerto New Short Stories (2019). He is also active as a conductor, having directed many of his own works as well as those of his colleagues.

Christiaan Willemse was born in 1997 in Pretoria, South Africa. He began his musical training with the violin at the age of 13, shortly afterwards he developed an interest in composing. In August 2014, he was part of Alexander Müllenbach's composition class at the summer academy of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. In 2012, he was awarded first prize in the youth category of the Stefans Grové National Composition Competition in South Africa. In 2015, he received a prize in the composition competition of the Golden Key Music Festival.

From 2016 to 2020, he studied composition in Kurt Estermann's class at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He completed his bachelor's degree with distinction in October 2020. Since then he has been part of the class of Johannes Maria Staud,* also at the Mozarteum, and remains part of this class as a postgraduate after completing his master's degree in October 2023. He had the possibility to complete an Erasmus exchange in Paris in 2022-2023 in the class of Frédéric Durieux for instrumental composition and Yan Maresz, Luis Naon and Grégoire Lorieux for electronics. He also received a scholarship from the Francis Burt Foundation Vienna for 2022-2023 and was involved as an arranger in the production Unterwegs at the Linz Landestheater in 2023.

In the past few years, he has taken part in several festivals and academies for New Music in Europe. These include the Crossroads Festival (Salzburg), ARCO (Salzburg/Marseille) and the Académie Ravel (Saint-Jean-de-Luz). During this time, he has had the opportunity to benefit from the expertise of renowned composers such as Yann Robin, Francesco Filidei, Eva Reiter, Henry Foures, Michael Jarrell and Ramon Lazkano. His music has already been performed by renowned ensembles, including oenm (Austria), Ensemble Zahir (Spain) and Les Métaboles (France).

In 2023, he received the first composition prize of the Académie Ravel. As part of the award, he received a commission for the 2024 Ravel Festival; this work will later be published by Edition Durand Salabert Eschig.

Score analysis and working on the applicants’ compositions, workshop with section leaders of the Tonkunstler Orchestra as well a workshop on musical notation for creating a professional score.

Orchestra rehearsals, conducting coaching, video analysis of the orchestra rehearsals and Music Lab-workshops on career development for composers. Ink Still Wet Closing concert: 25 August 2024, 3pm.

(Subject to changes)