Sílvia Lanao Aregay (1995, Spain) started her interest and passion for music at a very young age. Music composition was a natural result of her musical practice and soon would become the main motivation in her career. In 2014 she graduated from Conservatori Isaac Albéniz (Girona), where she specialized on classical piano performance. That same year she moved to Barcelona where she started composition at Conservatori del Liceu. There, she received lessons from Benet Casablancas, Ramon Humet and Israel David Martínez. In 2015, she participated in the International Composition Course, organized by BarcelonaModern Project and Damian Luna; lectures were given by Hèctor Parra. In 2016, she attended a masterclass with Kaija Saariaho at ESMUC, and with George Benjamin at Conservatori del Liceu.
During her period in Barcelona, she participated in various projects which led to premiers of her music at different locations including; Conservatori del Liceu, Fundació Eina, and Museu Picasso.
In 2016 she moved to Amsterdam where she completed her bachelor in composition at Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Wim Henderickx and Willem Jeths. During her studies in Amsterdam, she has received lessons from several guest teachers including Rebecca Saunders and Trevor Wishart amongst others.
In 2017, she was selected to participate in the first edition of the TimesAcademy, organized by the Belgian ensemble, HermesEnsemble, which resulted on the premiere of the piece Touch and Hearing at the concert hall Amuz in Antwerpen, Belgium. On the same year, her piece Nit, for symphonic orchestra, was premiered in Muziekgebouw aan t’IJ by the orchestra of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and Matthew Rowe as the conductor.
In December 2018, she was awarded the first prize, Mary Viëtor Prize, at the Alba Rosa composition competition during the festival Alba Rosa Viva! The festival is celebrated every two years at Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Her piece Empordà, for piano trio and soprano, was performed by Amatis Piano Trio and Katharine Dain at the kleine zaal of Het Concertgebouw and it was broadcasted by NPO Radio 4.
In 2019 she participated on the Opera Forward Festival at the Dutch National Opera & Ballet. She was part of a team of students from the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. Together with her team, they presented a short opera about the absurdity of social roles ad behaviours in society. The opera was named “If you walk on a circle long enough it could feel like a sense of direction”.
Also in 2019 continued her passion for multi-sensory musical performance. She designed the performance Synaesthesia, a culmination of a series of projects involving music and other senses which she had been developing since the start of her career. Synaesthesia is a one-hour musical experience in which the music is the guideline for a journey through the different senses, except the sense of sight.
In 2021 Silvia finished her master’s degree in musical composition at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Richard Ayres and Jorrit Tamminga. She expanded her musical skills by composing electronic music and taking a deeper insight into instrumental and orchestral composition.
Sílvia was selected as a resident composer with the Canadian based string quartet Quatuor Bozzini for Composer’s Kitchen 2020. Due to COVID reasons, the residency with the Canadian string quartet took place in 2021. That lead to the premiere of the piece ¿Friends?, during the Gaudeamus music festival celebrated at TivoliVredenbug in Utrecht, NL.
Silvia was part of one on the 4 teams, called the OFFSprings, which were a set of 4 projects commissioned by the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, to encourage the creation of opera by young professionals during the pandemic. The resulting product is In Nabijheid a performance that explores the possibilities of opera in a context of social inclusiveness. In this exciting project three worlds will coexist: Verdi’s Aida, 5 male voices of the DNO choir, and 5 male voices from the afro-surinamse choir, Black Harmony. The premiere was heald in at the Decor Atelier building of the opera in December 2020. The performance was broadcasted online.
Sílvia has recently participated in the creation of Lillith Ensemble’s first CD. She was commisioned a piece for the core members of the ensemble and she could add instrumentalists at her own wish. For that occasion she composed Elgdans.
Sílvia Lanao Aregay 