Constantin Basica

Constantin Basica is a Romanian composer living in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose current work focuses on symbiotic interrelations between music, video, and performers. His portfolio includes pieces for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra, electronics, and video. His works have been performed in Europe, North America, and Asia by artists and ensembles such as Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Liminar, ELISION Ensemble, Distractfold, Mocrep, JACK Quartet, Spektral Quartet, kallisti, RAGE Thormbones, line upon line, Retro Disco, Fresh Squeezed Opera, Séverine Ballon, Tony Arnold, Karen Bentley Pollick, and Olga Berar. Among the festivals and conferences that have featured his works are the MATA Festival (NY), Currents New Media Festival (NM), the International Week of New Music (RO), InnerSound New Arts Festival (RO), the International Festival for Video Art and Visual Music (MX), Aveiro Síntese Biennale for Electroacoustic Music (PT), Eureka! Musical Minds of California (CA), the 2017 and 2018 International Computer Music Conference (CN and KR) and the 2016 Sound and Music Computing Conference (DE and SE). He received the ICMA Award for Best Submission from Europe at the 42nd ICMC in Shanghai (CN).
 

Constantin earned a DMA in Composition at Stanford University under the guidance of Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, Brian Ferneyhough, Mark Applebaum, and Erik Ulman. His previous mentors were Georg Hajdu, Manfred Stahnke, Fredrik Schwenk, and Peter Michael Hamel during his MA and Erasmus Scholarship at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre (DE), as well as Dan Dediu, Nicolae Coman, Doina Rotaru, and Bogdan Voda during his BA studies in Composition and Conducting at the National University of Music Bucharest (RO). 
 

As an educator, Constantin has taught and conducted workshops at Stanford University, Escuela Superior de Música in Mexico City, the 2016 Sound and Music Computing Summer School in Hamburg, as well as the International Center for Research and Education in Innovative and Creative Technologies (CINETIC), the George Enescu National College of Music and the the National University of Music in Bucharest. He is the recipient of the 2022 Stanford Postdoctoral JEDI Award, the 2018 Carolyn Applebaum Memorial Prize, and the 2015 Chair’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Department of Music at Stanford University.

In recent years, Constantin has collaborated with Prateek Verma and other researchers on the development of several AI tools for co-creativity. Currently, he is a lecturer at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).