Following his secondary education at grammar school, Ivo Medek graduated from the Technical University of Brno (where he studied computing and software) and from the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts, where he was a composition student of Alois Pinos. Since 1990 he has been a lecturer on the theory of composition at the Janacek Academy. Medek has composed more than forty chamber, orchestral and electro-acoustic works, a large number of which have been performed at celebrated concert venues both in Europe and in the USA and have earned him awards and prizes in various competitions. Music Now/Downtown Opera Tour Proposal page 9 His Flow, for example, gained him the Czech Music Fund Prize in 1993, and his vocal composition Hora ruit a prize in the international competition "Europa Singen". Over the past eight years, Medek has been gradually evolving his own particular method of composition characterized primarily by the building-up and organization of various independent musical processes. He has given papers at several international conferences, for example in Mannheim, at the Darmstadt Summer Courses (1990 and 1994) and at universities in Portugal and Holland and elsewhere. In 1985 he founded Art Inkognito, one of the first Czech contemporary music ensembles, of which he was director until 1990. His interest in multimedia arts projects also developed during this period. He also works in close collaboration with the ensemble Dama Dama, and many of his compositions have come into being as a result of his work with this ensemble well as with other groups, solo performers and musical foundations both from the Czech Republic and from abroad. Medek is a member of Camerata Brno, the "Q" Association (of which he was nominated chairman in 1995), the Society for Electroacoustic Music, the Society for New Music, the Association of Musical Performers and Scientists and the Society for Microintervalic Music.

 

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