Ramon Lazkano

Ramon Lazkano (Donostia-San Sebastián, 1968) studied composition in San Sebastian, Paris and Montreal; he was awarded a First Prize of Composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Paris and received a DEA degree in 20th Century Music and Musicology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He received the Prince Pierre de Monaco Foundation Prize and the Georges Bizet Prize by the French Academy of Fine Arts, among other awards. He was composer in residence with the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España, at the Musica Festival in Strasburg and with Ensemble 2e2m in Paris.
His residence in Rome (at the Royal Academy of Spain and at the Academy of France Villa Medici) allowed him to carry out a reflection on composition and its meaning, focusing mainly on intertextuality, silence and the experience of sound, all of which giving birth to such emblematic pieces as Ilunkor (commissioned by the Euskadiko Orkestra Sinfonikoa), Hauskor (a commission of the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid) and Ortzi Isilak (commissioned by the Orquesta Nacional de España). In June 2012, Peter Eötvös conducted Ilunkor with the Bayerischer Rundfunk Symphonieorchester at the Munich Musica Viva series, while the Venice Biennale programmed Ortzi Isilak with Shizuyo Oka and the Basque National Orchestra conducted by José Ramón Encinar in 2014. Kairos Music published a monography cd with these three major orchestral works (Ilunkor, Ortzi Isilak, Hauskor).Between 2001 and 2011, Ramon Lazkano worked on Igeltsoen Laborategia (Chalk Laboratory), a large collection of chamber music pieces divided into various cycles, which echo sculptor Jorge Oteiza's "experimental laboratory" and more particularly the concept of chalk as a matter of inscription, erosion and memory linked to childhood; the aesthetic purpose of the Laboratory led to Mugarri (2010), commissioned by the Spanish Association of Symphony Orchestras and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra. The pieces of the Laboratory were premiered in Austria, Germany, Poland, Mexico, France and Spain; the ensemble recherche in Frankfurt, Ensemble 2e2m in Paris, Ars Musica in Brussels and Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles programmed portrait concerts of the Laboratory, and two monography cd's were recorded by ensemble recherche and Smash ensemble.
After the Laboratory, a new focus on architecture and duration is shown in his most recent works, such as Lurralde (Territory) for string quartet, written for the Diotima quartet and a vocal diptych, with Edmond Jabès's poems taken from his book La mémoire et la main: Nº1 Main Surplombe, for soprano and seven instruments, premiered in March 2013 in Ars Musica, and Nº2 Ceux à Qui, for six voices and eight instruments, commissioned by the Coupleux-Lassalle Foundation and premiered by the Neue Vocalsolisten and the Ensemble L'Instant Donné at Éclat in Stuttgart in February 2015.
Ramon Lazkano currently teaches orchestration at the Higher Music Academy of the Basque Country Musikene.