Justification of the jury in awarding the Encouragement Prize to Elena Mendoza:
"Elena Mendoza was born in 1973 in Seville, studied piano and composition – the latter with such divergent teachers as Manfred Trojahn and Hanspeter Kyburz – as well as German language and literature, and now lives in Berlin. In the past few years she has attracted considerable attention with a series of original compositions.
'Niebla', her most recent work for music-theatre, is about the “continuous questioning of realities,” says Elena Mendoza naming at the same time the central motor of her composing. Her music – scored mostly for relatively small, chamber music ensembles and yet highly complex – is the artistic questioning of reality, philosophical discourse and the exciting play with possibilities. Nothing is final, everything is in a constant state of permutation and variation; the irrational becomes recognisable in the logical context, the rational is removed to the sphere of the indeterminate. Her affinity to Spanish and Latin American literature, to the 'realismo magico', the game of deception between reality and fiction, does not come by chance.
Her musical language demonstrates imagination, a subtly developed sense of sound and profound skills in her craft. She does not exclude listeners but takes them on a voyage of discovery into the unknown; misleads them, enchants and bewitches them, or unexpectedly robs them of their illusions. In her music there are comic and absurd elements as well as tragic moments. A clear music-theatrical impetus is inherent in all her works, even the pieces of chamber music scored for small ensemble. Music-theatre of course in the sense that extends all boundaries of the genre and challenges the musician equally as an instrumentalist / singer / performer to consciously blur the contours of music, staging, concert, theatre, dance and lead the way into the open.
Mendoza does not intend to instruct the listener with her music but makes playful possibilities of seeing reality a sensuous experience."
Biography:
Elena Mendoza was born in 1973 in Seville (Spain). She studied German language and literature in her home town, piano and composition in Zaragoza with Teresa Catalán, in Augsburg with John Van Buren, in Düsseldorf with Manfred Trojahn and in Berlin with Hanspeter Kyburz. She is particularly interested in questions of sound colour and dramaturgy in instrumental composition. Music-theatre and the musical possibilities of language also have a special significance in her work.
Mendoza has already worked together with performers such as the Klangforum Wien, the Ensemble Modern, the Ensemble Mosaik, the Ensemble emex, the New Vocal Soloists Stuttgart and the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra and many others. She has received study grants from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar, the Schloss Solitude Academy and the Ensemble Modern Academy. She has been a lecturer in composition and experimental music at the University of the Arts in Berlin since 2007.
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