https://organ.monespace.net/

Jean-Paul Verpeaux was born in Paris on 1951.
In 1967, the church Sainte-Jeanne, near Bordeaux, did not succeed in finding an organist. The priest who was my father's cousin, proposed me this job because I studied the piano. I was 16 years old. So began my function of organist. Office which I would pursue then in Marennes, a city situated between Royan and La Rochelle.
Organist was not my profession, but a secondary activity which I shall still exercise while being an electronic engineer in the French Air Force.
Having written some technical movies musics for my employer, I was agreed in the SACEM
(Association of Composers and Music Publishers to protect copyright and royalties).
Then my work did not allowed me to play the organ for the offices, but I compensated for this lack with someother musical activities: composition of military music, writing books about synthesizers, teaching the electronic music in the Music Academy of Chinon, reporting for music magazines, designing softwares...
I envisaged, when retired from the army, to resume my functions of organist in Bourges where I
lived at present, but the Parkinson's disease from which I already suffer for several years returned my hands incapable to play the organ correctly.
Then, to spend my time, I have built at home a virtual pipes organ to compose this music, which I hope you will appreciate.

Martin Torp was born in 1957 in Flensburg and studied church music in Heidelberg. In addition to composing, he also worked as a concert organist, pianist, music teacher and publicist. He received a composition scholarship from the Fritz Berg Foundation and numerous commissions; in 2012 his symphonic cantata 'Psalm 103' was an award-winning in the competition 'Göttinger Psalter'. Torp's oeuvre includes orchestral works (among them 5 symphonies), vocal works (a full-length oratorio, cantatas, motets and songs) and chamber music works, as well as piano and organ music amongst other compositions. Since the mid-1990s his works are fundamentally marked by his predilection for harmonic sounds, vocal melody, pulsating rhythm and clarity of form.

https://martintorp.de/

prof. Evgenij Irsai, PhD.

Head of Department of Composition and Conducting

Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava

Irshai was born on January 15, 1951 in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) as a second son to Mark Irshai (Марк Александрович Иршаи) and Valentina Kunde (Валентина Яковлевна Кунде). Both his parents and his brother were musicians. His father was a violinist at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre (Mariinsky Theatre). His mother was a prominent piano teacher at the Leningrad Special Music School for Gifted children where Irshai also graduated some years later also taught composition and harmony.

He finished his studies at the Special Music School in 1969, consequently enroling at the Leningrad Conservatory where he studied composition with A. A. Tchernov and V. Uspensky (graduated in 1975) and piano with P. A. Serebryakov (gr. 1978). A year after receiving his master's degree he became a member of the Union of Russian Composers.

In 1991 he left St. Petersburg for Banská Bystrica (Slovakia) where he lived until 2007, then moving to Bratislava.

His years in Banská Bystrica were very dynamic. He was not only composing actively but was also giving concerts as an outstanding pianist. Trying to bring more contemporary music to the cultural life of the region, in 1997 he founded the international festival of contemporary art Musical Salons. The festival still takes place biennially and it has already hosted hundreds of eminent performers from around the world.

Irshai`s works were performed at the Academic Little Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Leningrad (present day Mussorgsky's Theatre, St. Petersburg) and at the several international festivals (St. Petersburg Musical Spring festival, Melos-Etos festival in Bratislava, festivals in Krakow, Italy, Bulgaria, and in other countries, e.g. Austria, France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan or USA).

He is a laureate of the "Youth, Mastership, Present" competition for the work Epigraphs for mixed choir a cappella on poetry of Arseny Tarkovsky (Leningrad, 1985), and for the work The Day Will Come for mezzo-soprano and piano on poetry of Russian poets (1986). Among his other prizes are Ján Levoslav Bella award for the trio Hard-Shabes (SR, 2000) , Dezider Zador award for Sonata del grato, (UA, 2008) first prize on the composer Competition Choir Laboratory XXI Century (Sankt Peterburg 2013 and third prize 2014) and special prize on the composer Competition Planeta Contrabass (Sankt Peterburg 2014).

Since 2001 Irshai has been lecturing composition at the Academy in Performing Arts in Bratislava (since 2010 as a professor) being the head of the Department of Composition and Conducting since 2011.

His students are awarded many prizes and diplomas on international competitions (e.g. Želislava Sojak, first prize in International competition "Donne in Musica", Serbia, 2012, Vladislav Šarišský - International Prokofiev Competition, Saint-Petersburg, Russia 2012, Peter Javorka - Generace, Czech Republic, 2012, Tomash Michalchak and Rastislav Vejo - Generace, Czech Republic 2013, Martin Lang - Generace 2015 ).

Bauer maturierte zunächst 2005 an der HTL Wiener Neustadt, studierte anschließend aber am SAE Institute in Wien Tontechnik. 2009 begann er sein Kompositionsstudium am Joseph-Haydn-Konservatorium des Landes Burgenland bei Tibor Nemeth, welches er im Juni 2012 abschloss. Von 2012 bis 2013 folgte ein Bachelor-Studium an der Hochschule für Musische Künste Bratislava bei Vladimir Bokes.

Bauer wirkte bei zahlreichen Erasmus-Projekten, darunter Haydn-The Progressive (Eisenstadt) und Opus Erasmus (Frankreich) mit. Am 21. Mai 2013 wurde sein Werk "Wagnermorphose" samt einem kurzen Interview in der Ö1-Sendung "Zeit-Ton" gesendet. Des Weiteren ist Bauer Preisträger der Theodor-Kery-Stiftung 2013.