Martin Smolka (*1959) studied composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and privately with Marek Kopelent. His compositions have been performed in many places in Europe and North America, and he also writes music for theatre and film. Starting out from Webernism and minimal music, Smolka arrived at a kind of sonoristics, i.e. he worked with instrumental sounds reminiscent of familiar noises (ship and train sirens, the sounds of rain and many others), and these sound reminiscences helped to define the often nostalgic, sometimes grotesque idiom of his music. Since 1998 his style has shifted from sonoristics to work with tones and typical elements of traditional music, but these are deformed, partly by microtones and partly by collage-style compilation.