PROFILE
The experimental violinist George Kentros studied at Yale University and the Mannes School of Music in the US as well as at the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm. He has performed as a chamber musician, soloist, and sometime actor across Europe as well as in North and Central America, Japan, and Oceania, primarily with the new music ensemble “the peärls before swïne experience” and the electronic duo “there are no more four seasons”. He has specialized in the newest of art music, and has to date commissioned more than 200 works from composers from 21 countries, receiving prizes in contemporary interpretation from the Society of Swedish Composers, Edition Reimers, and The Nordic Composer Council. He also founded the avantgarde art club SEKT, which was a pioneer in the realm of genre crossing alternative art expressions, and has since been on the boards of various arts political societies as well as the festival Sound of Stockholm and the International Society of Contemporary Music. In 2004 he was named one of Sweden’s 24 ”Arts idols” by the afternoon paper Expressen.
During the past few years, he has enjoyed a 5 year grant from the Swedish Artist Council and been a research fellow at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm (Mejan), where he developed the project ”This violin must die”, a lecture performance in which a violin is destroyed onstage and the resulting sounds are treated and played back over 40 minutes. Apart from giving master classes and lectures at schools from Sweden to Japan and New Zealand, he has also been a teacher of ”Contemporary musical practice” at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Stockholm as part of the Copeco program, a European Union masters program for composer-performers. In 2018 he was elected to the presidential council of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM), a position he still holds. In his capacity of chairperson for the Swedish section of ISCM, he is also the publisher of the periodical Nutida Musik.
PRIZES AND AWARDS
1985: Jonathan Edwards Travel Stipend, Yale University
1986: The Swedish-American Foundation
1988: Royal Academy of Music
1989: Honorable Mention, Cremona string quartet competition
1995-2013: Swedish artist’s council stipends
2003: The Crystal Prize
2005: The Society of Swedish composers Interpreter’s prize
2010: The Nordic Composers Society great prize
2015: 5-year stipend from the Swedish Artist’s Council
Selected projects since 2003:
1999-: producer/director of club SEKT, Nalen/Bio Rio/Kulturhuset
2003-2005: 4 hourlong comedy programs for the Swedish Radio classical station: script,
direction and musical work
2005: Hourlong concert on SVT2: script, idea, musician
2006: Kunderavariasjoner, Norwegian play with Fakta Morgana
2008-2011 : Frilansteatern, several children’s musical plays across Sweden
2011: ”Evilution”, Norwegian play with Fakta Morgana, actor/musician
2012-13: ”Vitula physicata”, sound installation with English sound artist Kaffe Matthews
2018: musical transcriptions for “The Magic Of… vinyl- terror- and- horror”, det frie, Copenhagen
2019: “This violin must die”, lecture performance
ENSEMBLES
1994-: the peärls before swïne experience (Pärlor för svin)
2004-: there are no more four seasons
2014-: reBell
2018-: GAHLMM
DISCOGRAPHY
1990: Ferro String Quartet, “Dag Wirén Quartet nr. 5,” Caprice CAP 21413
1998: “the peärls before swïne experience,” Caprice CAP 21587
1998: The Forge Players, “flow my teares,” Warner/Atrium 3984-22109-2
2003: CD with the pearls before swine experience, “Swïne Live!” Caprice CAP 21715
2004: “Lost Signals and Satellites” av Annie Gosfield, verk för soloviolin, Tzadik Records
2005: Sten Hanson CD “More CannedPorridge”, Firework Edition Records
2008: there are no more four seasons, SEKTCD001
2010 : the peärls before swïne experience ”Debris reassembled”, Phono suecia PSCD 183
2012: ”Cranks and cactus Needles”, Annie Gosfield, Tzadik records
2013: Lost signals and drifting satellites, Annie Gosfield, Tzadik records
2013: re:biber, (with there are no more four seasons), SEKTCD004
2018: reBell, “Så som det alltid har varit har det aldrig varit”, SEKTLP001
EDUCATION
1981-82: Alabama School of Fine Arts
1982-86: Yale University, fil. kand. engelska
1985: Mannes School of Music, New York City
1986-91: Musikhögskolan i Stockholm
2017-19: Artistic researcher at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Chairman, Föreningen Musikcentrum, 2004-2012
Vice chairman, Sound of Stockholm festival, 2012-2017
Chairman, Swedish section ISCM, 2010-
Producer, club SEKT, 1999-
Publisher, periodical Nutida Musik, 2010-
Member of the Executive Committee, International Society of Contemporary Music, 2018-
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