Edition: III

Petra-Strahovnik

Petra Strahovnik

Country: Slovenia

The Artist's Music

Bio/Studies

After finishing a music gymnasium program (music theory and piano), Petra Strahovnik enrolled to the Academy of music in Ljubljana, where she studied composition and music theory with Uroš Rojko prof. She is currently studying with Martijn Padding and Peter Adriaansz at the Royal Conservatoy in The Hague.

In September 2011 Petra was invited to attend the EU-Art-Network in Austria, where her piece, Obsession was performed. While attending all of these seminars and workshops, Petra learned from many renowned composers and musicians such as, J. Beer, M. Smolka, T. Ondrušek, I. Medek,L. Garau, F. Rivalland, Rob Warring, Carin Lavine, Valerio Murat, Mathias Kaul, Martijn Padding, Vinko Globokar, Detlef Heusinger and many others. In July 2009, she attended a summer school Erasmus in Castelfranco (Italy), where a collaborative multimedia piece “Futurismo hurra!” (Petra Strahovnik, Vasja Progar, Matej Bonin) for chamber ensemble, narrator, dancer, electronics and video. In June 2010, she received a Matrix 2010 scholarship for a seminar in Freiburg (Germany), where she had a public presentation of her work with her mentor Vinko Globokar. In May 2011 she got another scholarship for Matrix 2011, where her mentors were Mark Andre, Daniel Peter Biro, Detlef Heusinger, Andre Richard and Reinhold Braig. In September 2010, Mr. S. C. Trowell (England) granted her a scholarship for Gaudeamus Music Week music seminar in Amsterdam. In October 2010 in February 2011, Petra received another scholarship for Impuls Academy seminar in Graz (Austria). There, her mentors were, Beat Furrer, Georg F. Haas, Klaus Lang ter Pierluigi Billone. In January 2011, Petra received the highest award from the University of Ljubljana for all of her musical achievements – Academic Prešeren Award.

Career

Her works range from solo, chamber, vocal, instrumental and orchestral music. Many of them have been performed in many festivals, seminars and workshops all over Europe like in 2007, 2009 and 2010 at an annual Percussion workshop for composers and percussionists in Trstenice (Czech Republic). At the 24th Slovenian Music Days, Festival Ljubljana (Slovenia), Nutshuis (Den Haag). In the context of the 25th Slovenian Music Days her piece “Panisteriah” for String Quartet, Clarinet, Piano, Percussion and Soprano voice, written after the book Balerina, ballerina by Marko Sosič. Since her beginning Petra has been following her path of discovering new sounds and she has never been barred by traditional way of how we think about sound and music. She is also very aware of the audiences’ perception of sound in space.

Notes on the Musma Composition

“Between East & West”

Between East & West: On the inside, torn between two worlds. Constant battle which is judged subjectively. Possession, obsession, pride… me or the society? The travel of energy. A spiral deep? The bottom. World of sound? World of rhythm? Frequency snap… Everything is the same. Same = zero. Dedicated to Uroš Rojko.