Dr. habil. Judit Rajk DLA

Photo: Gábor Fejér

The singer Judit Rajk graduated at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She received her doctor’s degree in 2009, and now she is an Associate Professor at the Church Music Department, habilitated in May 2021. She is teaching solo singing, methodology and vocal history. Since 2013 she is also a Professor at the Kodály Institute in Kecskemét, teaching voice training. From September 2023 she serves as the Director of the Kodály Institute. Since 2019 she is an honourable member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts (Hungary).

She is a concert singer, famous for her extremely deep but shiny contralto voice and for her unique repertoire which encompasses early Gregorian chants, lieder and oratorios and contemporary pieces. She has worked with lots of contemporary composers, who dedicated works for her. Among others, she recorded the main role of the contemporary opera Roman Fever by Gyula Fekete at Hungaroton (2000), Allen Brings's Songs for Arizona University Recordings (2009), she collaborated with the Oscar prize winner actor, Maximillian Schell in a Memorial Oratorio for the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust (2006), sang the Turkish premiere of the arias and excerpts of Kamran Ince's opera called Judgement of Midas with the Bilken Symphony Orchestra in Sardis, Turkey. In 2005, 2011 and in 2018 she received the Artisjus Prize for performing new Hungarian contemporary music. Ms. Rajk collaborated on projects with several orchestras in Hungary and abroad, as the Budapest Strings, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, the Concertante di Chicago, and the Turkish Presidential Orchestra. She gave recitals in concert halls like the Grand Hall of the Music Academy in Budapest, the Deutsche Oper, the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Ermitage Theatre in St. Petersburg, the Süreyya Opera House in Istanbul. She is a noticed chamber musician and a professor worldwide, guest of festivals and masterclasses, working with famous soloists and chamber ensembles, among others the recorder player and conductor Maurice Steger, the viola player Naoko Shimizu, the clarinettist Lorenzo Coppola and Horia Dumitrache, the pianist Zoltán Kocsis, László Borbély, Özgür Aydin, the French horn player David Cooper, the cimbalom player András Szalai, the Saint Ephreme Male Choir, the Ensemble UnitedBerlin, the Chamber Ensemble of the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonic Chamber Soloists. She has been a member and founder of chamber ensembles as the Corelli Consort, the ContrasTon and the Trio Passacaglia. She recorded CDs at Hungaroton, BMC and the Liszt Academy, her newest solo CD - under the title Stolen Time - was published in 2020 at Hungaroton, including orchestral songs by Kodály and contemporary composers, in cooperation with the Budapest Strings conducted by Alessandro Cedrone. In 2019 György Kurtág wrote and dedicated his last piece, the Seven Songs under the title "… sleep no more...” Op.50. to Judit Rajk. Between 2009 and 2022 Ms. Rajk worked as the artistic manager of the FUGA classical concerts at FUGA Budapest, and she is the Head of the Board of the European Cultural Foundation Budapest. Since 2019 she has been a zealous guardian of the legacy of her husband, the world widely known architect, production designer and legendary human rights activist László Rajk (1949-2019), curator of memorial exhibitions, co-editor of books and catalogues. Founder and leader of the "Art Department" independent art space in Budapest.