Gorka Hermosa International accordion competition created in China
2022/04/22
Euskara. Kultura. Mundura.
The Tianjin Conservatory, located in the fifth most populous city in China, with more than 15 million inhabitants, will host the ‘Gorka Hermosa International Composition Contest’, organised by the World Confederation of Accordionists (Confédération Mondiale de l’Accordéon, CMA)
Music by accordionist Gorka Hermosa (Urretxu, Gipuzkoa, 1976) will be performed in the competition and an international jury presided over by Hermosa himself will select the winner. Urretxu will compose a piece for the winner, who will have the right to perform it exclusively for one year.
Hermosa´s work is well known among accordionists the world over, with more than 40 orchestras have performed his compositions over the years. Hermosa has also won a number of awards. Three years ago, in Sicily he opened the Accademia di Musica Hermosa, and in 2019 Hermosa was named one of the 10 most beloved accordionists in the world in an international survey by the New York-based Accordion Stars magazine in which 27,000 people from 126 countries participated.
In 2013 Hermosa won the CIA-IMC UNESCO Composition Prize, and over the following six years he won the prize for the best composition of the year four times awarded by the World Confederation of Accordionists (CMA). Besides China, he has performed concerts in Iran, Russia, the Americas, and most European countries.
Hermosa has released 3 solo CDs, mostly of his own music, and has collaborated in more than 20 recordings. He has also written four books on the accordion and has given lectures on the history of the instrument in Macedonia, Italy and Spain. He currently teaches accordion at the Conservatorio Superior de Música Jesús de Monasterio in Santander.
Surprising as it may seem, it is currently estimated that there are more accordionists in China than in the rest of the planet. Gorka Hermosa has visited the country three time, two of them at the Beijing Conservatory where he has given concerts and masterclasses. The current level of Chinese accordionists is amazing, as Hermosa himself explains: “Almost all classical accordion music competitions worldwide have had Chinese winners in recent years.”