Tomoko Fukui and George Kentros Elected to the ISCM Executive Committee

Japanese composer Tomoko Fukui and Swedish violinist George Kentros were newly elected to the Executive Committee of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) during the penultimate ISCM General Assembly held in the ballroom of the Merchantel Beijing during the 2018 ISCM World New Music Days hosted by the Beijing Modern Music Festival in Beijing, China. The Executive Committee (ExCom) consists of a five-member Presidential Council (President, Vice-President, and three ordinary members), which are elected by the ISCM General Assembly, plus an appointed Secretary General and Treasurer. The current officers of the ExCom are President Peter Swinnen, Vice-President Glenda Keam, Secretary General Ol’ga Smetanová, and Treasurer Walter De Schepper. As per the Statutes of the ISCM, the President and the Vice-President are elected by the General Assembly on separate ballots for a term of three years and other three members of the Presidential Council are elected for a term of two years. After the expiration of their terms of office, the members of the Presidential Council may be re-elected in the same mandate (member, Vice-President or President) only once for the immediately following term. At the conclusion of 2018 ISCM General Assembly, Kjartan Ólafsson and Anna Dorota Władyczka completed their second terms as ordinary members; Frank J. Oteri completed his first term as an ordinary member and was re-elected. The ExCom runs the Society on a daily basis throughout the year.

Tomoko Fukui was born in Kyoto and is currently based in Tokyo. Recipient of a Scholarship Prize at the International Music Summer Course of Contemporary Music in Darmstadt as well as the Akiyoshidai International Composition Prize, and the Third Prize in the Japan Music Competition, Fukui’s music has been featured during the Venezia Biennale (2002), the Takefu International Music Festival (Toshio Hosokawa/music director 2005), the Seoul Pan Music Festival (2006), the Maelz Music Festival in Berlin (2007), ECLAT New Music Stuttgart (2012), and Ars Musica in Bergium (2016). Her music has also been selected for performance during ISCM World (New) Music Days festivals in Hong Kong (2002), Zagreb (2004), and Vienna (2013). In addition to her compositional activities, Fukui is also the director of the Tokyo-based contemporary music ensemble next mushroom promotion (a recipient of the Saji-Keizo prize established by Suntory Music Foundation), which she founded in 2001, and has served as the ISCM delegate for the Japan Society for Contemporary Music, the official Japanese section of the ISCM.

George Kentros was born and raised in the United States but has lived in Sweden for many years.  He studied at Yale University and the Mannes School of Music in the USA 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 the USA, Central America, and Japan, primarily with the new music ensemble the peärls before swïne experience and the electronic duo there are no more four seasons.  To date, Kentros has commissioned more than 200 works from composers based in 21 countries. He also founded the avant-garde art club SEKT, which was a pioneer in the realm of genre-crossing alternative art expressions, and has since been on the boards of arts political societies as well as the festival Sound of Stockholm; He also serves as the President of the Swedish Section of the International Society of Contemporary Music for which he has served as Sweden’s delegate. In 2004 he was named one of Sweden’s 24 ”Arts idols” by the afternoon paper Expressen.