Ana-Maria Avram
[RO]
Romanian composer and interpreter Ana-Maria Avram was born in Bucharest in 1961. She is one of the flag-bearers of hyperspectralism, a movement that explores the phenomenological, dynamic presence of sound and understands composition as a performative experience of constant change rather than as a contained, pre-formatted process.
In 1976, Avram founded and began conducting the Hyperion Ensemble together with her husband, collaborator, and fellow composer Iancu Dumitrescu, for the performance of their own and other hyperspectralist works. Avram has written over 90 pieces of solo, chamber, and orchestral music for instruments and/or electronics. Most of this music is inextricably linked to a deep conviction about the spirituality and soul inherent in sound space, and she views compositional techniques oriented around imposed structure and control as a kind of desacralisation. She begins the compositional process by meditating. A piece then takes gains substance and contour until it is finally sculpted and liberated live: “When Ana-Maria Avram conducts, she sometimes seems to be plucking stars from the sky, or jabbing into hives, causing thousands of tiny critters to fly up into the air like flurries of gold dust. Avram allows the moment to shape the music” (WanderingStar e.V.).
