Program and Artist Biography

Miroslav Srnka was born in Prague in 1975. He studied musicology at the Charles University in Prague (1993–99) and composition at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts with Milan Slavický (1998–2003). Study trips took him to the Humboldt University in Berlin 1995-96 and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris in 2001. He has participated in exchange programmes and composition courses with Ivan Fedele in 2002, Philippe Manoury in 2004 and at IRCAM Paris. He received the Gideon Klein Award and the Generace Award in 2001 as well as the Leoš Janácek Anniversary Prize in 2004. 2009 he has been awarded a Composer’s Prize by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. – In 2005 his short opera “Wall” after Jonathan Safran Foer was premiered at the Berlin State Opera. He was “Composer for Heidelberg” at the Theater Heidelberg in 2006-07. His compositions have been premiered by leading interpreters such as the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Modern and at festivals including Klangspuren Schwaz (Austria), the New Music Days Ostrava (Czech Republic), Musica Strasbourg and Avanti! Summer Sounds in Porvoo, Finland. 

The Fama Quartet is an international string quartet founded in Prague in 2005. Its members, who had been orchestral musicians in the Prague Philharmonia, have always been devoted to chamber and string quartet music-making. Fama Q is David Danel (Poland/Czech Republic) on violin, Aki Kuroshima (Japan) on violin; Ondřej Martinovský (Czech Republic) on viola, and Balázs Adorján (Hungary) on violoncello.

The Fama Quartet regularly presents the works of contemporary composers, from the avant-garde classics or more traditional approaches of the 20th century (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Dutilleux, Kurtág, Ligeti, Kagel, Nono, Feldman, and Xenakis, among others) to prominent international and Czech contemporary composers (G.F. Haas, Husa, Kopelent, Smolka, Srnka, Marek, Matej, Pudlák, Zemek, and Burlas). The Fama Quartet also paves the way for young Czech and international authors such as Adámek, Pelo, Ho, Kadeřábek, McMullin, and Lejava. fama Qdoes not, however, cease to explore the beauty of traditional string quartet music by composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Dvořák, Janáček, Shostakovitch, and Martinů.

The Fama Quartet has appeared at renowned Prague concert series such as Přítomnost (Presence) and Krása dneška (The Beauty of Today) and at festivals such as Contempuls, Der Film, New Music Marathon, and Třídení (all in Prague); Exposition of New Music (Brno, Czech Republic); MusicOlomouc (Olomouc, Czech Republic); You:rope Together (Essen, Germany); Afyonkarahisar Classical Music Festival (Turkey); and Evenings of New Music (Bratislava, Slovakia). It has also performed at concerts in Japan.

In 2011–12, the Fama Quartet will make its U.S. debut and will also tour Romania with works of Ligeti, Kurtág, and Xenakis.