User:Jhooworthsmithle/Raquel García-Tomás

Raquel García-Tomás (Barcelona, 1984) is a Catalan composer specialized in multidisciplinary and collaborative creation. She has been recognized by the Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte de España receiving the Premio Nacional de Música 2020, composition category.

Musical Career
Having studied musical composition at Esmuc, García-Tomás earned a doctorate at the Royal Collage of Music in London, where she lived for six years. She has carried out creations with the English National Ballet, the Royal Academy of Arts or the Dresdener Musikfestspiele and has also collaborated as a composer and video-creator with the berliner Theatre director Matthias Rebstock on Büro für postidentisches Leben, premiered at the Festival Grec and the Neuköllner Oper Berlin. García-Tomás was also selected as a guest composer for the contemporary music cycle Sampler Series hosted by the Auditori de Barcelona in 2015-2016 with her piece Blind Contours no. 1, played by the Oslo Sinfonietta. Other formations she has worked with are, to name a few, Phace Ensemble, Ensemble Contemporáneo Orquesta de Cadaqués, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Càmera Musicae, Experimental Funktion, CrossingLines Ensemble, Ensemble Sonido Extremo, Cosmos Quartet, Barcelona Clarinet Players, Barcelona Reed Quintet, BCN 216 and PluralEnsemble.

Her music has been played at venues like the Auditori de Barcelona, Palacio de la Música Catalana, Teatre Lliure, National Theatre of Cataluña, Palau de la Música (Valencia), Auditorio de Zaragoza, Teatro Español,Teatros del Canal, La Casa Encendida or the Auditorio 400 del Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Her music has also been listened to in various cities, most of them being European, but also in Cairo, Rosario o Buenos Aires.

She has collaborated with the creation of the Chamber opera Dido realoded alongside Xavier Bonfill, Joan Magrané and Octavi Rumbau, produced by Ópera de Bolsillo and Nueva Creación, and stage directed by Jordi Pérez Solé, premiered in October 2013 at the Real Academia de Medicina de Barcelona and at the sala Berlanga in Madrid. After the premiere, the same team continued working together on Go, Aeneas, Go!, which premiered in may 2014 at the Russisches Haus der Wissenschaft und Kultur in Berlin after obtaining the first prize of the Berliner Opernpreis 14 organized by the Neuköllner Oper and GASAG to help and support emerging creators.

In 2015, García-Tomás and Magrané created the opera set in Barcelona, disPLACE, played at the MusikTheaterTage Festival in Wien, Centro Santa Mónica in Barcelona and at Teatros del Canal in Madrid co-produced with the Teatro Real.

Balena Blava was premiered in Febuary 2018 at the Teatre Nacional de Cataluña, with music by García-Tomás and text written by Victoria Szpunberg, a twenty minute-long piece inspired by Igor Stravinski’ s The Rite of Spring. The event took place with the collaboration of Esmuc students and actress Marta Angelat. That same year, Je suis Narcissiste, the comic opera written by Helena Tornero, set designed by Marta Pazos and music provided by García-Tomás was premiered at the Teatro Real (Madrid), Teatro Español and the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona.

During the 2019-2020 season, she was resident composer at Residencias Musicales organized by the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera. She has also obtained Leonardo, a BBVA scholarship which enables her to write a new opera, Alexina B, alongside Irène Gayaraud (librettist) and Marta Pazos. Alexina B is an opera inspired in Herculine Barbin, also known as Alexina B. Although being born an Intersex person in 1838, Herculine was assigned female at birth. During her years as a governess she falls in love with another teacher named Sara, which ends up pushing her to reclaim her identity as a male. She ends up leaving her lover and her job before moving to Paris. Poor and alone, she later on decides to commit suicide.

The opera Alexina B is set to premiere the following 2022-2023 season at the Liceu, in Barcelona.

Awards

 * 2017. She was awarded with the prize El Ojo Crítico by the Classical Music Spanish National Radio (RNE) after being praised by the jury for the originality of her ideas and the use and combination of her compositional language.
 * 2019. In September, the comic opera Je suis narcissiste, was awarded the Interdisciplinary Prize by the Premios Alícia. A prize with which the Catalan Academy of Music intends to project and promote in a transversal way the artístic, cultural, social and educational values music has to offer.
 * 2020. Je suis narcissiste was a finalist in the XXIII edition under the Best musical or lyrical performance category, organized by Premios Max. Furthermore, García-Tomás was finalist in the Best Musical Composition for a scenic show organized by the same entity.
 * 2020. On the 14 of October, she was awarded the Premio Nacional de Música by the Spanish ministry of Sports and Culture under the Composition category.