Santa Bušs

„Music is the common denominator of all the senses. It can be scented like a fragile and intoxicating fragrance, it can be tasted like an excellent wine or an everyday meal, it can be physically touched and felt, emotionally experienced and can tickle the nerves like the most engaging game of sport, or calm like a powerful sermon, and, at any moment, can be heard and listened to. Composing is a condition of an acute expression of all these senses, balancing on the border of the conscious and the subconscious, a confusion of inscrutable mysticism and rational intellect“.

Santa Bušs

Santa Bušs was born on July 19, 1981 in Limbaži. She studied at the Zvejniekciems School of Music (1989 – 1994) and at the Vidzemes Jūrmala School of Music (1994 – 1996), later at the Alfrēds Kalniņš Cēsis College of Music (1996 – 2001), where she studied in the piano class of Inta Kārkliņa and the organ class of Lelde Krastiņa, and studied composition with Līga Liepiņa-Kaņepe. She continued her studies at the Latvian Academy of Music, where, in 2005, she graduated the music theory class of Prof. Dr. Art. Jeļena Ļebedeva, and, in parallel, studied in the composition class of Arturs Maskats (2002 – 2007). In 2009, she received her Master‘s Degree, graduating the composition class of Rolands Kronlaks. Santa Bušs also studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (2005 – 2006) with Prof. Dr. Manfred Stahnke (composition) and Prof. Georg Hajdu (multimedia composition).

Santa Bušs supplemented her studies with many master classes, including the IV, V, and VI International Young Latvian Musician Camps – Master Classes in Ogre, as well as at the First Workshop for Baltic States young composers in Dundaga (2002) with composers Tōnu Kōrvits and Helena Tulve, Rytis Mažulis, Šarūnas Nakas, Rolands Kronlaks, the Second International Workshop for young composers in Dundaga (2004) – master classes with Remigijus Merkelys, Taivo Tulev, Tapio Tuomela, the Third International Workshop for young composers in Dundaga (2006) – with Klas Torstensson, Rolf Wallin, John Woolrich and the composition and marimba master classes with Keiko Abe in Villecroze, France (2007). She participated in the Next Generation master classes, which were a part of the festival Donaueschinger Musiktage in Germany (2006, 2007, 2008), and the Fourth International Workshop for young composers in Mazsalaca (2008), with Johannes Maria Staud, Yannis Kyriakides, Alla Zagaykevych; XI Internationale Werkstatt für Komponisten Schloss Trebnitz, Germany (2009), with Johannes Schöllhorn; the Fifth International Workshop for young composers in Mazsalaca (2010), with David Lang, Pär Lindgren, Richard Ayres; pre-art / CONVERGENCE workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia (2011), with composer Stefan Wirth, Opéra en Création master classes as part of the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in in France; the Sixth International Workshop for young composers in Cēsis – with William Brook and Michael Levins, as well as composition master classes in Villecroze, France, with Philippe Hersant. She supplemented her education with individual master classes with composers Veli–Matti Puumala, Bernd Asmus, John Palmer, Wolfgang Heiniger (2007), Ole Lützow-Holm, Demetrius Spaneas, Benjamin Thigpen (2008), Bill Brunson, Saed Haddad (2009). Santa Bušs actively works in the field of music research and journalism, writing about music and art.

In 2003, she was awarded 1st Place in the Young Music Journalist Competition. In 2004, her book Operas libretu leksikons (Lexicon of Opera Librettos) (compiled and research editor; Riga, publishing house Jumava, 536 pages) was published. In 2008, Santa Bušs received a DAAD stipend for study at the Bayreuth Summer University in Germany, where she supplemented her study with Academic German Language and Inter-cultural Relationships. In 2012, she received the American Latvian Association Culture Fund, Okolo-Kulaks Memorial Fund creative scholarship. In 2013, she won at the Festival Mixtur 2013 competition Open Call in Spain, as well as the ensemble mise-en / IAWM New Work Project Competition in the United States.

Since 2010 Santa Bušs is member of Latvian Composers’ Union. She has been compoer-in-residence at the Casa Pantrova in Lugano, Switzerland (2007) and at the Le Ville Matte in Teulada, Sardinia (2010). Fundación Valparaíso Mojacar, Spain (2011), the Visby International Composers’ Center in Gotland (2011), the extended programme Villa Sträuli in Winterthur, Switzerland (2012), the Druskininkai Artists’ Residence in Druskininkai, Lithuania (2012), the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France (2012), as well as Château de Monthey in Monthey, Switzerland (2013). Santa Bušs‘ music has been performed in Latvia (including several New Music Festivals Arena and festvals Latvia’s New Music Days ), in Lithuania (at the festival Youth Chamber Music Days in Druskinikai and elsewhere), in Germany (including the festival Donaueschinger Musiktage 2007 - Next Generation and the Usedomer Musikfestval 2010), in France, Italy, Slovenia, Canada, UK, Austria (including the festival Zeitklänge), Switzerland, the United States, as well as Georgia, Turkey, Belgium (the ISCM festival World Music Days 2012 and the festival Transit in Leuven), Denmark and Spain (Mixtur Festival 2013). In 2013, performances are planned in Cuba, France, New York, and Germany, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus and elsewhere.

Santa Bušs © LMIC