Juraj Filas

Juraj Filas (5 March 1955 – 31 December 2021) was a Slovak composer.

Filas graduated from the Prague Conservatory in 1976 in voice and composition, and received a diploma in composition in 1981 from professors Jan Zdeněk Bartoš and Jiří Pauer.

His compositions have been performed by well known soloists including Joseph Alessi, principal trombone in the New York Philharmonic, Otto Sauter, international piccolo trumpet soloist, and ensembles and orchestras in Europe and in the U.S. – including the Beethovenfest in Bonn, Germany, at the Prague Spring Festival, by the ORF, Vienna, in the Tonhalle of Zurich, as well as in London, Glasgow, St. Gallen, Geneva, Fulda, Paris, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Mexico City, and at Carnegie Hall, New York, and by the choir and orchestra of sacred music at Sacred Space, New York.

Several of his works were broadcast by Czech and Slovak radio and television, and are recorded on CD.

Rob Cameron on Radio Praha called him "one of the Czech Republic's most important contemporary classical composers".

Filas used a distinctly lyrical and emotional musical language with which he strove to maintain the distinct European musical traditions of some of the masters such as Verdi, Beethoven and Mahler.

Filas lived in Prague and was an assistant professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where he taught composition.

He died from COVID-19 on 31 December 2021, at the age of 66.

His work included more than 100 compositions: symphonies, cantatas, numerous compositions for chamber ensemble, as well as the prize-winning TV opera Memento Mori; a concerto grosso Copernicus; the opera Jane Eyre (2010); The Wisdom of the Wise Man, a cantata for choir, cello and organ; The Song of Solomon, a cantata for soli, choir and orchestra; and the requiem Oratio Spei, which was dedicated to the victims of terrorism.