Uzbekistan-born Tatar composer Adeliia (Adele) Faizullina (b.1988) is a vocalist, multiinstrumentalist and Tatar Quray player. As a composer, she explores cutting-edge vocal colors and paints delicate and vibrant atmospheres inspired by the music and poetry of Tatar folklore. The Washington Post has praised her compositions as “vast and varied, encompassing memory and imagination.”
Her recent commissions include works for Jennifer Koh, the Tesla Quartet, Johnny Gandelsman, and the Metropolis Ensemble. Her works have also been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Albany Symphony, Kronos Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, the Del Sol Quartet, Ashley Bathgate, Stephanie Lamprea, and Duo Cortona. She herself performed as soprano soloist with the Seattle Symphony in her own work, Tatar Folk Tales, after she won the Seattle Symphony Celebrate Asia Competition in 2019. Adeliia was one of seven composers to be selected for the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute in 2022. In the same year, she was selected for the American Composers Orchestra EarShot readings. She was a guest artist at Play On Philly in 2021. She is a current member of Composing Earth 2022-2023, by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Her music has been performed at the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Chamber Music Society of the Carolinas, and National Sawdust.
In 2021, she was featured in the The Washington Post, “21 for ’21: Composers and Performers Who Sound Like Tomorrow.” In 2020, she was a finalist for the All Russia Young Composers Competition Dedicated to the 66th International Rostrum of Composers, in Moscow, Russia. From 2018 to 2020, Adeliia was a Cynthia Jackson Ford Fellowship recipient at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. In 2018, she won first prize in the Radio Orpheus Young Composers Competition in Moscow, and was a finalist for International Rostrum of Composers, in Budapest.
Adeliia received her BM in Voice in Kazan, Russia, and BM in music composition in Gnessins Russian Academy of Music. She has an MM in music composition from the University of Texas at Austin, studying with Yevgeniy Sharlat, and in 2019 started her DMA at the University of Southern California, studying with Nina C. Young. She is currently pursuing her PhD in music & multimedia composition at Brown University.
Currently Adeliia resides in Providence, RI. She also happens to be blind. She enjoys taking walks and being in nature.
Saghat
Composed July 31, 2023 – Violin, Cello, Piano
From the composer: “Recorded in Louisville, Kentucky by Longleash Ensemble for the 2023 Loretto Project, “Saghat” in Tatar language can mean time, a clock, an hour or a moment. The piece is dedicated to the renowned composer Kaija Saariaho after hearing about her recent passing. This is the first piece I wrote after I was diagnosed with colon cancer and since then have been thinking a lot about time, and appreciating every moment if it. I wrote this piece based off a recording of a piano improvisation I had done – the piece is a respectful nod to the inspiration that came to me in that exact moment in time.”