Marios Joannou Elia

Elia’s international breakthrough came in 2011, with the première at Mannheim's Central Square of the one-hour multimedia symphony Autosymphonic, performed by the spectacular combined forces of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, Stuttgart State Opera Children’s Chorus, 80 automobiles of all types and eras ‘played’ by 120 young musicians, Xavier Naidoo and Söhne Mannheims! According to a study by the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University, Autosymphonic achieved a TV/media audience of nearly two billion. Since then, Elia has been widely accepted as an innovative mastermind of contemporary culture and has attracted the attention of the mass media. The Südwest Presse wrote: ‘Monumentalist: Elia is considered in the music world to be the man for monumental events’, while The New York Times, Deutsche Welle, Reuters and ARD – among others – have also praised his work. Even before this, his compositions had been regularly performed throughout Europe, Asia and America – his 80-minute opera Die Jagd (2008), for example, was praised for its ‘idiosyncratic sound worlds’ (Die Welt). Born in 1978, Elia studied composition with Adriana Hölszky at the Salzburg Mozarteum and musicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. In 2004, inspired by the Aristotelian polyaesthetic conception, he developed The Concept of Polymediality. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Southampton in 2010, supervised by the British composer Michael Finnissy. Elia’s oeuvre of more than 70 pieces to date is multifaceted not only for the diversity of its stylistic musical genres but also for the variety of its intended performance venues. It includes works for opera houses and concert halls – for example, the Berlin Philharmonie and the Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall, and the state opera houses of Hannover, Stuttgart and Skopje, as well as unusual venues, such as Salzburg Airport and Mirabell Gardens, the Transparent Factory of Volkswagen in Dresden and the eight-storey building of the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony. Renowned orchestras, ensembles and soloists, such as the Sinfonietta of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Recherche, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble and the Austrian Ensemble for New Music have performed his works. Elia has been awarded prestigious international prizes, including the Lutoslawski and the Serocki Awards in Warsaw (2004 and 2008), the Edison Denisov Prize in Moscow (2007), the Luciano Berio Prize in New York (2010), the BMW Prize in Munich (2005) and the Gold Apple of FAMAB for Germany’s best innovative public event (2012). Besides his activity as a composer, Elia has worked as the artistic director of large-scale projects and innovative polymedia events, including the European Capital of Culture initiative (2013–15), the Highlight Celebrations for the Invention of the Car (2009–12), described by The Huffington Post as ‘one of the world’s more remarkable symphony concerts’, and the Tallest Church in the World (2013–15).