Fulbright Reality Czech

Andrew Harlan is a composer, sound designer, and bassist. A Boston Conservatory graduate currently pursuing a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, Andrew has been mentored by leading figures in contemporary music including Marti Epstein, Myra Melford, and Ken Ueno. Andrew's original music was showcased in a multitude of festivals including the Valencia International Performance Academy, the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, the Summer Institute of Contemporary Performance Practice, and the Wellesley Composers Conference. During the past academic year, Andrew spent nine months at the Music and Dance Faculty of The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he composed music that combines improvisation and live electronics. Although Andrew's inspiration to spend a year in the Czech Republic was spontaneously inspired by a meeting with Czech composer Michal Rataj in California, today Andrew says: "My time as a Fulbrighter was a reminder to me that the most beautiful gift of being an artis...

Avery Morris is a violinist and a Doctoral Candidate of Musical Arts in violin performance at Stony Brook University. This year, she is spending nine months at the Music and Dance Faculty (HAMU) of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague as a Fulbright Student grantee researching Gideon Klein's lost works and the legacy of Czech Musical Modernism. Avery has a special passion for the music of this Czech composer Gideon Klein, who died at the age of 26 in Fürstengrube, a subcamp of Auschwitz after his internment in Terezín. Avery discovered Klein by chance during the pandemic, when looking for music to play together with her twin sister. She immediately got hooked, and started to explore Klein's music, as well as his destiny. Klein experimented with genres ranging from jazz and blues to serialism and microtonal music – a style later labeled by the Nazis as "degenerate music." Avery's curiosity grew more, so applying for a Fulbright Student grant to the Czech Republ...