Karmella Tsepkolenko

Karmella Tsepkolenko, born in Odessa in 1955, studied the piano and composition at the Odessa Secondary Specialized Music School and subsequently at the A. V. Nezhdanova Odesa National Academy of Music. She completed a postgraduate course at the Educational Moscow State Pedagogical University from 1986 to 1989 and gained a doctorate in education. She attended composition masterclasses in Germany and has participated in international festivals. Tsepkolenko has won prizes at international composition competitions and received numerous awards and scholarships, including scholarships from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, DAAD and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has composed more than 100 works which have been released on twelve CDs and broadcast on radio around the world. She is additionally the founder and artistic director of the festival Two Days and Two Nights of New Music and the New Music (ISCM Ukraine). Tsepkolenko has been a professor and head of the department of music theory and composition at the National Music Academy A. V. Nezhdanova in Odessa since 2009. She is also a member of the board of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine.