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The Uruguayan harpsicordist, Laura Dearmas, got her Bachelor of Music degree from the Uruguayan University Music School (1992); which she standardized with the Real Conservatory of Madrid (1998). In 1975 she won the national contests of Musical Youths (JJMM); the Musical Student Association (AEMUS); and Artigas-Washington Library, as well as the Prize "Rosa López Comunión" (Spain-1990). She got a cultural exchange scholarship to California from Fullbright Amity Institute. (1993).
Laura Dearmas has been dedicated to harpsichord music since 1995. She started piano musical studies and has a professional career as a piano player that is worth mentioning. She has been guided by masters Santiago Baranda Reyes, Raquel Boldorini, Manfredo Gerhardt, Sarah Bourdillon and composer Guido Santórsola (recording a great part of his repertoire for piano). Her admiration upon sonorities achieved by Santórsola made her organize, in the years 1994 and 1995 respectively, two Tributes in his honour, supported by the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute, from which live registers are included herein.
Laura Dearmas performed concerts as a soloist player and in chamber groups in the main auditoriums of Montevideo, the Uruguayan provinces and Spain.
In 1995 Laura Dearmas starts fulfilling a long postponed wish: to dedicate to the interpretation of ancient and Baroque music, types of music, that together with the contemporaneous music, were her everlasting passion from the beginning. She got a scholarship to perform high studies related to this instrument at Zaragoza Superior Conservatory under the guideline of José Luis G.Uriol, and she ended such studies obtaining the highest grades. She gave performances at Salamanca, Vigo, Zaragoza and at Madrid Juan March Foundation. From 1997 to 2001 she finished and obtained a “Harpsichord Graduation” at the Federal University of Campinas (UNICAMP- Brazil) with Edmundo Hora. Such graduation was considered of “Ministerial Interest” by the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture (1998), for being the first Uruguayan to receive a degree in harpsichord performance. In the same year she won the contest to perform the “Master of Arts” (at UNICAMP).
From that on, fruitful exchanges between Uruguay and Brazil in pro of Baroque music have been taking place, with the support of Mercedes Olivera Association and Mozarteum Foundation of Uruguay. Concerts as soloist and chamber concerts, as well as duet concerts - performed with her sister harpsichordist Nives Dearmas-, led her to carry out several performances in different auditoriums and Brazilian festivals with Baroque Orchestra “Armónico Tributo”, Manfredo Kraemer, Rosana Lanzelotte, Lucia Carpena and Edmundo Hora (Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo, Campinas, Curitiba, Sao José dos Campos). She was invited, by renowned guitarist Master Abel Carlevaro, to play with him his Concert for guitar and harpsichord (1998), as a first audition in Uruguay, within the framework of the “International Guitar Festival”. Such work was recorded live the following year at the Cabildo in Montevideo.
In 2002 Laura Dearmas brought out a CD with the integral version of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), under the Mozarteum label of Uruguay.
Laura Dearmas played in master-classes for some of the world’s leading Baroque interpreters, including Jacques Ogg, Pierre Hantaï, Wilbert Hazelzet, among others.
In 2004 Laura Dearmas organizes, with Mozarteum of Uruguay, SODRE and Brazilian Embassy, a deserved tribute to composer Guido Santórsola on his 100 birthday anniversary, and she performs the “Double Concert for Guitar, Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra”. This work is performed again in 2005 in a series of concerts at the city of Porto Alegre (Brazil) with the UNISINOS Orchestra. In 2008 she won the prize awarded by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Uruguay, in the annual competition “Funds for Cultural and Artistic Development”, with the Project “Our Musical Past in its Three Stages: The Saloon, The Theatre and The Church”.
In the last years Laura Dearmas has focused her activity jointly with her sister the harpsichordist Nives Dearmas, on the diffusion of "Dearmas Duo", recording their first CD “German Music For Two Harpsichords” in 2008.
Laura Dearmas is a well known piano teacher in Uruguay and since 2007 she manages with her sister the “ Music Studio” at The Anglo Shool.. |
