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Roland Baumgartner (* February 18, 1955 in St. Pölten) is an Austrian composer, conductor and artistic director.

Life and Work
Roland Baumgartner studied composition, piano and trumpet at the Vienna Conservatory. He graduated at the age of 18 and at 21 was the youngest music school director in the Salzburg Musikschulwerk since its existence. During this time he composed the ballet Bergsegen, which was premiered by the Royal Ballet London. In 1979 he went to America and studied composition with Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein's influence led to the decision to work as a "freelance composer" and freelance conductor. He conducted orchestras such as the Czechoslovak Philharmonic Orchestra, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Festival Orchestra, the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, and served as music director for ORF and ARD.

He composed the music for international films and TV series, including The Court Reporter, Deadly Games, Tatort, Joseph's Daughter, With Body and Soul, Jungle Warriors, Night of Four Moons, The Secret of Black Dragon, Beyond the Dawn, and Ali Baba. He has also worked for singers such as Engelbert Humperdinck, Peter Hofmann and Jennifer Rush.

His largest orchestral work to date, Missa pacis (World Peace Mass), was premiered on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution. In August 1994, Missa Pacis was presented in Bonn, Germany. In September 1995, the Peace Symphony was revised and visually staged on the occasion of the Linz Klangwolke 95 in cooperation with the Brucknerhaus Linz and the ORF.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Hollywood, Roland Baumgartner produced a symphonic poem for a 100-piece orchestra with choir, the Hollywood Symphony. This was released as a CD series in 1996.

Roland Baumgartner was the first Western composer to realize a co-production between the former USSR and the USA with the ballet film Ali Baba. It featured soloists from the Atlanta Ballet and the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet, and the libretto was written by the daughter of the former Soviet foreign minister, Manana Shevardnaze.

In 1991 Roland Baumgartner, who had always been fascinated by the dazzling figure of Empress Elisabeth, had the idea of writing a musical about the former Empress of Austria. It was to be an original European musical with an international musical style. Already in the same year it was performed under the title Sissi & Romy at the Mörbischer Festspiele with Claudia Dallinger, Peter Dvorský and Marc Berry. Under the title Sisi - Imperial Beauty, performances followed in 2001 in Bad Ischl, Munich and at the Ronacher in Vienna.

For a tour of Germany under the title Movie Classics in the spring of 1994 with the Russian Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, which Margot Werner accompanied, Roland Baumgartner arranged all the titles and conducted the orchestra.

On September 7, 1996, on the occasion of the Linzer Klangwolke 96, the nature symphony Symphonia Globalis was performed in Linz's Donaupark. The symphony is dedicated to Greenpeace founder David McTaggart, who was present at the premiere in Linz.

In 2002, the completion of the George Foreman Project followed with the Vienna Festival Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Boys Choir, and tenor soloist Ramón Vargas. The George Foreman Oratorio was produced at Openair Stadium Houston. In 2004 Baumgartner presented The House of Dreams, an opera/musical about the Austrian painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser.[2] In 2008 he completed Opera Mystica based on the texts of Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Abraham and Mohammed. Its goal is the reconciliation of cultures.

On March 5, 2010, the neo-romantic opera "Luther" premiered at Theater Hof, followed by further performances in Bayreuth.[3][4] The opera "Hoffmann's World", commissioned by Theater Hof and the E.T.A Hoffmanntheater in Bamberg, was performed for the first time at the Hof Opera House on March 4, 2011.

A symphonic film music concert conducted by Roland Baumgartner with works by John Williams and Roland Baumgartner was performed at the Slovak National Theater in Bratislava on November 4, 2010. In 2011, he was commissioned there to write the opera Maria Theresa, which premiered on October 11, 2012. In 2013 the chamber opera Der Marilyn-Monroe-Prozess was premiered in the course of the Lower Austria Quarter Festival, followed by performances in Russe, Varnar and Tel Aviv in 2014.

In 2014 Roland Baumgartner founded the Romantik-Theater in Untermarkersdorf. He is its artistic director and composed the neo-romantic operetta Fluttering Hearts for its first season. In 2015, the opera Calafati about one of the founders of the Vienna Prater was performed there, followed by Baumgartner's singspiel Silent Night during the Christmas season, and the operetta The Rose Queen in 2016.

In 2017, the world premiere of the operetta Ein echter Kavalier and world premiere of the opera version of the play Sisi took place in Stara Zagora.

In 2018 he completed the operetta Der himmlische Bacchus, which was premiered in the same year. In the same year, two special performances of the chamber opera The Marilyn Monroe Trial were also held in Vienna. This was followed in December by the world premiere of Maria Theresa - Orchestral Suite at the Erfurt Opera House.

In November 2019, his symphony die Symphonia Globalis was performed in Sofia.

In 2020 Baumgartner created an opera about the 1st President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, which was broadcast on Kazakh television in December of the same year.