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biography
Adrian Mocanu (also spelled Mokanu) is a composer working in the field of contemporary classical music.
He was born in 1989 in Kyiv, Ukraine. He was studying music composition at the National Music Academy of Ukraine and carried out his postgraduate studies at Centro Superior de Enseñanza Musical Katarina Gurska in Madrid, Spain. He received the ‘Gaude Polonia’ scholarship of the Ministry of Culture of Poland and was taking classes at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in 2019, and in 2022 was granted a scholarship of the Academy of Fine Arts of Paris for an artistic residency at Casa de Velázquez - the Academy of France in Madrid. In 2024, he was granted the Weltoffenes Berlin Fellowship of the Senate of Berlin for a one-year collaboration with ensemble Maulwerker.
The winner of the 38th Frederic Mompou International Award in Barcelona in 2017, two years later he obtained the second prize of IV International Composition Competition GMCL/Jorge Peixinho in Lisbon. In 2021, he was the winner of the Borys Lyatoshynsky Composer Competition in Kharkiv, Ukraine; in 2022 he won the second prize of 5th Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition in Vienna and he obtained the second award of the XXXIII Young Composers Prize by the SGAE Foundation and CNDM (Madrid).
One of the finalists of the ‘Latino Voices’ project by the USA-based ensemble Anima Vox Duo in 2018, he also participated in the second edition of ‘CoOPERAtion’ laboratory for composers and playwrights in 2018/19), during which his opera ‘Feux follets’ was created and premiered. In 2021/22 he was one of the composers in residence of the 'Postcolonial Recherche' project with Ensemble Recherche.
He participated in various composition master classes with professors Beat Furrer, Raphaël Cendo, Philippe Hurel, Peter Ablinger, Francesco Filidei, Johannes Schöllhorn, Caspar Johannes Walter, Clemens Gadenstätter, Martin Schüttler, Helena Tulve, Stefan Prins, João Pedro Oliveira, Mauricio Sotelo and Jaime Reis.
Among other festivals where his music was played were the Warsaw Autumn, musikprotokoll (Graz), Rossi Fest (Belgrade), Dias de Música Electroacústica (Lisbon), VANG. Músicas en vanguardia (Madrid), Festival Mixtur (Barcelona) and Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival (New York).
His works were performed in numerous countries such as Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Serbia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil and USA.