Slovak composer Ľubica Čekovská is a graduate of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. She studied composition with Dušan Martinček and continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Professor Paul Patterson. She has also attended composition courses with Róbert Saxton, Thomas Adés, Arvo Pärt and Harrison Birtwistle. In the 2010/2011 season, she was the resident composer of the Altenburg-German Philharmonic Orchestra, and since 2008, she has been a member of the artistic council of the world-famous Prague Spring Festival. She is the in-house composer of the renowned German publishing house Baerenreiter. The composer's genre range is unusually large, including chamber, symphonic, instrumental and vocal works, as well as incidental and film music. Her compositions have been performed at various music festivals: David Oistrakh Festival in Pärnu, Estonia; Spitalfields Festival in London; Prague Spring; ISCM World New Music Days; Melos Ethos Festival in Bratislava; Salzburg Aspekte Festival and others. The composer is the recipient of several awards: Cuthbert Nunn Composition Prize of the Royal Academy of Music for the composition Fragment and Elegy for Solo Bayan, Elsie Owen Prize of the Royal Academy of Music, Mosco Carner Award, Leverhulme Award, London and the Jan Levoslav Bella Prize for her work Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

 

Her more recent works include Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (premièred in the season of the Altenburg-Gera Philharmonic Orchestra), Theatre Music for String Orchestra, Dorian Gray Suite, Evenood for wind quintet, Four Movements for piano. The composer's first experience with the music-drama genre was the collective composition project As Time Goes By at the Hannover State Opera (2005). Dorian Gray is her first full-length operatic work.