Born in 1974 in Heraklion, Greece, Minas Borboudakis started studying piano and music theory with Georgios Kaloutsis in 1985. In 1992 he moved to Munich where he continued his musical education with Olaf Dressler and Urszula Mitrenga-Wagner in piano, and Wilfried Hiller in composition. He subsequently honed his compositional skills with Peter Michael Hamel in Hamburg. He has attended a series of master classes with Luciano Berio, George Crumb, and Wolfgang Rihm in compostition and Rudolf Kehrer and Aleksey Nasedkin in piano.
Borboudakis was awarded a scholarship by the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum University Salzburg in 2000, the Tübingen Composition Scholarship in 2003, the “Bayerische Staatsförderpreis für Musik” in 2004, and a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2007. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, most notably the third prize at the Günter Bialas International Chamber Music Competition (for Krámata) in 2002, the Rodion Shchedrin Chamber Music Award (for Choróchronos I and Σ – Cassiopeia) in 2005 and the prize of the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Foundation as recognition of his work as composer and performer in 2008.
Borboudakis’ music has been commissioned and performed by renowned orchestras, including the Choir, the Symphonieorchester and the Rundfunkorchester of the Bavarian Radio, the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Athens State Orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker and the Tonhalle- Orchestra Zürich. He has also collaborated with prominent ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, Kremerata Baltica, Münchener Kammerorchester, Singer Pur, Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, ERGON Ensemble and Camerata Athen. Notable soloists Peter Sadlo, Johannes Moser, Alexej Gerassimez, Andreas Skouras, Alice Sara Ott and conductors Johannes Kalitzke, Tito Ceccherini, Vassilis Christopoulos, Enrique Mazzola, Constantinos Carydis, Juraj Valčuha, Carl St. Clair have performed his music. As composer, he cooperated with institutions and festivals including the Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutschlandfunk, MDR Musiksommer, Bregenzer Festspiele, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Kasseler Musiktage and many others. His music theater, “liebe. nur liebe”, was premiered in 2007 under the baton of Kent Nagano at the Munich Opera Festival of the Bavarian State Opera. The political story “Z” was the theme for his homonymous music theater work, which was premiered with great succes in 2018 at the Greek National Opera.
Beside working as a composer and organizing composition workshops, Borboudakis regularly appears as a pianist and conductor performing his own and other contemporary composers’ works.
His compositional style is influenced by microtonality, percussive timbres, and sliding sounds. Some focal points in his work are time and space, classical philosophy, literature, mythology, and cosmological questions. Dominated by strong rhythmical impulse and experiments with electronic sounds, his music borrows elements from ancient greek tonal systems and rhythmic patterns.
Minas Borboudakis lives and works in Munich.