Diana Rotaru (b. 1981, Bucharest) has written from chamber and orchestral music to chamber opera and soundtracks for multimedia or dance shows and short films. Her music explores different expressive directions, from hypnagogia or pre-oneiric aesthetics, feminine psyche, humor or imaginary folklore. 

She is also active as a promoter of new music in Romania, as the artistic director of MERIDIAN International Festival and the main coordinator of the Romanian Music Information Center (CIMRO.ro). Since 2019 she is president of the ISCM Romanian National Section. 

Diana Rotaru has won numerous prizes, among which the Romanian Academy’s "George Enescu" Award (2010), the ISCM-IAMIC Young Composer Award (World Music Days, Vilnius, 2008), the Irino Prize (Japan, 2004) or the "George Enescu" Prize ex-aequo (Romania, 2003 and 2005), as well as multiple awards from the Union of Composers and Musicologists in Romania. Her works have been commissioned by Ryoko Aoki (Japan), Ensemble XXI (Dijon), Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Pärlor för svin (Sweden), Ernst von Siemens Foundation, Takefu International Music Festival, etc. 

She was a resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (autumn 2007), on a George Enescu grant from the Romanian Cultural Institute. In April 2011 she was an Artist-in-Residence at Villa Sträuli, Winterthur (Switzerland), at the invitation of Ensemble TaG, who performed her music in two concerts during that period (Verborgen in einer Muschel/ Hidden Inside a Shell – Theater am Gleis and Meet the Artist: Diana Rotaru -Villa Sträuli). In April-June 2015 she was Artist-in-Residence in Vienna, with a grant offered by the Austrian Federal Chancellery & KulturKontakt Vienna. 

Diana Rotaru is currently teaching composition at the National University of Music in Bucharest, where she studied with Ştefan Niculescu and Dan Dediu (2000-2005) and where she has a PhD in Composition (with the dissertation "The Recent Trance and the Principle of Repetition in New Music", 2012). She also studied composition with Frédéric Durieux at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (2005-2006). She participated at different summer composition courses such as Acanthes (Metz, 2008), Voix Nouvelles-Royaumont (2002 and 2006), or the International Bartok Seminary (Szombathely, 2003), thus working with Jonathan Harvey, Savatore Sciarrino, Brian Ferneyhough or Michael Jarrell, among others. In September 2018 she was invited to be an assistant professor to Toshio Hosokawa at the Takefu International Music Festival in Japan.

The underl­ining fact­or behind ­every work­ that I've­ written i­n the last­ few years­ is the qu­est of red­iscovering­ the secre­t power th­at music h­as. There­fore, many­ of my wor­ks are inf­luenced by­ texts bel­onging to ­ancient or ­ modern my­stics, ran­ging from ­Lao Tzu an­d Heraclit­ to Osho, ­Eckhart To­lle, Gan­gaji or Mooji. Late­ly, the sa­cred / profa­ne relatio­n has intr­igued my m­usical thi­nking, and­ the complementarity o­f the pola­r opposite­s has beco­me the mai­n idea in ­many of my­ works, ir­respective­ of the aesthetical ­orientatio­n, be it a­vantgardis­tic or tra­ditional ­regardless­ of the me­dium used,­ be it liv­e-electron­ics or the­ ancient d­uduk… Commenting on a piece played during ISCM World Music Days, Frank Oteri from New Music Box was saying “Hommage à Papaji contained some extremely lush harmonies that seemed to float beyond consciousness...”
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Gabriel Malancioiu’s music has been presented to audiences on five continents in over 270 concerts, performed by prestigious ensembles such as Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, the Slovenian Chamber Choir or the Aventure ensemble, by performers such as Florian Mueller, Gudrun Hinze or Richard Craig, by conductors such as Michael Wendeberg, Huba Hollókői or Martina Batič. Composer Corneliu Dan Georgescu remarked that Gabriel Malancioiu is "one of the most active personalities, a confident and very original voice in the contemporary musical landscape".

Gabriel Malancioiu is a member of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists, of the Executive Committee of ISCM – Romanian section - and of some international music organizations such as Vox Novus (USA), La Villa des Compositeurs (France/Italy), Temp’ora (France), Access Contemporary Music (USA), Society of Composers (USA). Gabriel Malancioiu is currently teaching Modern composition techniques, Orchestration and Musical Analysis at the West University of Timisoara, Faculty of Music and Theater.

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