Dániel Péter Biró

(1969 - )

Dániel Péter Biró is Assistant Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the School   of Music at the University of Victoria.

In July 2004, Dániel Péter Biró completed his Ph.D. in Composition at Princeton   University. He first started his musical studies at the Bartók Conservatory in Budapest, Hungary.  From 1991-1992, he was a Fulbright scholar in Frankfurt, Germany where he studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt. He later studied in Bern and Vienna. In   1995, he did folk music research at the Academy of Science in Budapest. His works have been performed at the Alte Oper-Frankfurt, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the Bartók   Festival in Szombathely, Hungary and have been broadcast on Swiss, Austrian, German and Italian public radio. He received an opera commission from the Neue Horizonte Bern/Schlachthaus Theatre in Bern, Switzerland in 1998. In 1999, he was awarded the Hungarian Government's Kodály Award for Hungarian Composers.  In 2000, he received grants from Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni for purposes of Hebrew study and dissertation research at Haifa University, Israel. In 2001, his piece The Crossing (Daf), was performed as a commissioned piece of the Stuttgart Opera. In 2002, he was a fellow at the Atlantic Center of the Arts. In 2003, he received a dissertation research grant from the Princeton University Program in Judaic Studies.

In the summer of 2003, he was awarded a Summer Research Grant from the Princeton Council on Regional Studies, enabling him to take part in the Sommerakademie at the Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. There he worked with the Ensemble SurPlus, which performed the first part of his composition Mishpatim (Laws). In 2004, he presented his work at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany. Mishpatim (Laws) was also performed by the Aventa Ensemble at the University of Victoria in February 2006. In August 2006, the second version of   Mishpatim (Laws) was performed by the ensemble recherche at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music: The composition was commissioned by the Internationale Musikinstitut Darmstadt. In Darmstadt, he lectured on his music. In 2006, Dániel Péter Biró was a faculty fellow at the University of Victoria Centre for Studies in Religion and Society: there he researched early Jewish and Christian chant traditions. In 2007, his composition Simanim (Signs/Traces) was performed by members of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra: this composition was commissioned by German Radio (HR). Dániel  Péter Biró was commissioned by Vancouver New Music to write a piece for solo viola, three voices, seven instruments and electronics. This new composition, supported through a grant of the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, was premiered during their 2008/2009 season.