Konstantia Gourzi

Konstantia Gourzi is both a composer and conductor, and she has said she finds those two activities inseparable in her music-making. Gourzi is also an important educator, and wherever she has taught, she has established new ensembles devoted to contemporary music. Her music falls mostly into the orchestral, chamber, and choral genres. Her commissions include those from the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. She has also conducted such ensembles as the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. Gourzi joined the faculty at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München in 2002, where she has remained ever since. She has been heard on recordings both as a conductor, leading the ensemble opus21musikplus in a performance of a jazz rendering of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and several times as a composer. The 2021 album Anájikon was devoted entirely to Gourzi's works.