Composer
Biography:
Since completing his studies in 1982, Thomas Blomenkamp has been working as a freelance composer and pianist. He lives with his wife, soprano Dorothee Wohlgemuth, and their children Leah and Aaron near his hometown of Düsseldorf.
Born in 1955, he decided to study music after achieving success in chamber music at the Jugend musiziert competition and completing his secondary education: piano with Herbert Drechsel and David Levine at the Robert Schumann Institute in Düsseldorf (concert exam diploma), composition with Jürg Baur at the Cologne University of Music (diploma). He completed masterclasses in piano and chamber music with Ditta Pasztory-Bartók, Rudolf Buchbinder, Andor Foldes, Sandor Végh, Rainer Kussmaul, William Pleeth and the Amadeus Quartet, received the North Rhine-Westphalia Young Artists' Award and was a prize winner at the International Composition Competition in Budapest (the jury included György Ligeti). György Ligeti).
This was followed by scholarships from the Richard Wagner Association in Düsseldorf and the Stichting Culturele Uitwisseling Nederland Duitsland, stays in London, Amsterdam and Vienna, and music awards from the city of Duisburg and the Bergische Biennale Wuppertal.
The premiere of the opera Der Idiot (based on Dostoyevsky), commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vereinigte Städtische Bühnen Krefeld/Mönchengladbach, brought him to prominence in Germany in 2001. Renowned conductors such as Frank Beermann, Anthony Bramall, Karel Mark Chichon, Kenneth Duryea, John Fiore, Toshiyuki Kamioka, Lothar Königs and Jürgen Kussmaul have conducted performances of his stage and orchestral works.
Numerous commissions for orchestras (Folkwang Chamber Orchestra, Northwest German Philharmonic Orchestra, German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra), ensembles (Cherubini Quartet, Berlin Saxophone Quartet, Berlin Philharmonic Octet, Rivinius Piano Quartet), choir (Freiburg Minster Choir) – combined with performances at important concert venues such as the Beethoven House in Bonn, the Düsseldorf Tonhalle, the Duisburg Mercatorhalle, the Glocke in Bremen, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as in many countries in Europe, Japan and the USA – reflect the resonance of a body of work that now comprises 70 compositions of all genres.
Albums:
Orchestral Works – Chamber Music – Piano Music:
