Laura Ana Mânzat: Concerto for 3 cellos and orchestra

Laura Ana Mânzat was born on the 24th of April 1969, in the town of Dej, Cluj County, Romania. She studied composition at the ‘’George Enescu’’ Academy of Music Iași, with Vasile Spătărelu as her professor and at the National University of Music Bucharest, with Ulpiu Vlad. She graduated in 1993. After that, she pursued postgraduate studies in The Netherlands with Ton de Leeuw and France with Ricardo Mandolini. She has been a member of the UCMR (Romanian Composers’ and Musicologists’ Union) since 1994 and the Romanian Section of ISCM since 1995, and ARFA (Romanian Association of Women in Art) since 2015. She works as an editor at Romanian Musical Radio. During the years she composed a large variety of works, from chamber music and orchestral works to vocal pieces.

Mânzat’s Concerto for 3 cellos and orchestra was written in 2019, imagined as a dialogue between the different groups of instruments in the orchestra, which are joined by a new group, that of the three cellos. It was played for the first time on the 13th of February 2020 in Bacău, by the cellists Mircea Marian, Valentin Simion, and Sofia Blându with the ‘’Mihail Jora’’ Philarmonic Orchestra conducted by Roberto Salvalaio.