Victor Alexandru Colțea (b. 1986, Romania) is a composer and the artistic director of the ensemble Sargo, a Lausanne based group dedicated to the promotion and creation of contemporary music.
After starting guitar with his father, Vasile Colțea, at an early age, he continued his development moving towards composition.
He studied at the National University of Music – Bucharest with Dan Dediu, Hochschule für Musik und Theater – Hamburg with Fredrik Schwenk, and at the Hochschule für Musik – Luzern where he studied with the composer Dieter Ammann.
He has also participated in Academies and Master-classes such as Composer Seminar during the Lucerne Festival, at the Impuls | Academy, etc. given by composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, Bernhard Lang, Beat Furrer, Peter Michael Hamel, Octavian Nemescu, Doina Rotaru, Enno Poppe, etc.
He won several prizes and scholarships, among them, the first Prize at the Mendelssohntage Aarau 2017, the prize for musical creation for 2014 given by the Romanian Academy of Science and Arts, the special prize of George Enescu Museum at the “International Composition Competition George Enescu”, the prize of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists for the chamber vocal section with the piece “Zori”, etc.
His creations include symphonic and chamber music with or with out electronics, music for theatre, short-films, and for interactive installations, such as the one for the Paul Signac Exhibition at the Romanian National Art Museum.
His pieces were performed in different concert halls throughout Europe, by different ensembles and orchestras like Luzern Sinfonieorchester, Thüringer Symphoniker Orchestra, Ensemble recherche, Ensemble Phœnix–Basel, Ensemble Soyuz21, Ensemble Sargo, Lucerne Festival Alumni Ensemble, Ensemble Fractales, CexSaxo duo, etc., but also in different music festivals, such as Lucerne Festival, Blurred Edges (Hamburg); Mizmorim Festival (Basel) EuropArt (Bruxelles); Impuls Academy | Festival (Graz); International Week of New Music (Bucharest), Innersound International Festival (Bucharest); Saxopen World Festival and Congress for Saxophone (Strasbourg); Cully Classique (Cully), New Music Days, Szenenwechsel (Lucerne), etc.
His works have been broadcasted by different radios such as Deutschlandfunk, NDR (Germany), Espace 2 – RTS (Switzerland), Radio România Musical, Radio România Cultural (Romania), ORF (Austria) etc.