Eric Tanguy
French Composer Eric Tanguy has been awarded ‘Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs 2014’. The jury was composed by more than 1000 students from upper classes of French high schools (Seconde, Première, Terminale). The work the students choose was Tanguy’s ‘Evocations pour violoncelle et orchestre’. It came from a choice of six which were initially proposed: ‘Tremendum’ by Thierry Pécou, ‘Art of Metal III’ by Yann Robin, ‘Chiaroscuro’ by Jacques Lenot, ‘Suoi Tranh’ by Nguyen Thien, ‘The End (Sum n°4)’ by Oscar Strasnoy, and finally ‘Evocations’ by Eric Tanguy.
Voted ‘Composer of the Year’ at the annual ‘Victoires de la Musique Classique 2004 and 2008, Éric Tanguy was held in high esteem by Mstislav Rostropovich who, in 2001, gave the first performance of his Second Cello Concerto at the ‘Flâneries Musicales’ in Rheims, and the following year took the same work to Boston and New York (Carnegie Hall), where he performed it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa.
Born in 1968, Éric Tanguy has already earned himself a fine reputation as a composer. He studied composition with Horatiu Radulescu from 1985 to 1988, then with Ivo Malec and Gérard Grisey at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM), where he was awarded first prize for composition in 1991. In 1988 he received the ‘Darmstadt Stipendienpreis’, and in 1989 the Villa Medici extramural Prize. In 1991 he was awarded a bursary by the ‘Haut Conseil Culturel Franco-Allemand’, and in 1992 he received the Villa Medici Award (successor of the famous and much coveted Prix de Rome) and the ‘Darmstadt Kranischtein Musikpreis’. Then came the André Caplet Prize awarded by the ‘Institut de France’ (1995) and the Hervé Dugardin Prize awarded by the SACEM (French Performing Rights Society) in 1997.
In 1993-1994 Éric Tanguy was resident at the French Academy in Rome and in 1995 he was Henri Dutilleux’s special guest at the Tanglewood Music Center (United States). He was composer in residence in Champagne-Ardennes (1995), Lille (1996), then from 2001 to 2003 with the Orchestre de Bretagne.
Characterized by important commissions and performed by the greatest festivals and institutions around the world, Éric Tanguy’s catalogue comprises eighty works (solos, chamber compositions, concertos, vocal and symphonic pieces). They are now in the repertoires of many of fine artists.
