Adrian Mokanu (also spelled Mocanu due to Romanian origin) was born in 1989 in Kyiv, Ukraine. He was studying music composition at P. Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine with professor Yuri Ishchenko, and later started postgraduate studies at Centro Superior de Enseñanza Musical Katarina Gurska in Madrid, Spain. He participated in various composition master classes with composers Beat Furrer Raphaël Cendo, Philippe Hurel, Peter Ablinger, Francesco Filidei, Johannes Schöllhorn, Caspar Johannes Walter, Clemens Gadenstätter, Martin Schüttler, Helena Tulve, João Pedro Oliveira, Mauricio Sotelo and Jaime Reis during various workshops in Ukraine, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Hungary.
He was the winner of the 38th Young Composer Competition – Frederic Mompou International Award in Barcelona in September 2017.
He was also one of the finalists of ‘Latino Voices’ project by USA-based ensemble Anima Vox Duo in 2018. In 2019 he received the ‘Gaude Polonia’ scholarship of the Ministry of Culture of Poland and was taking classes with professor Paweł Łukaszewski at Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. He was the participant of the second edition of ‘CoOPERAtion’ laboratory for composers and playwrights (Moscow, 2018/19), and his opera ‘Feux follets’, which was commissioned for this workshop, was premiered at Archstoyanie festival in Russia in July 2019.
Among other festivals where his music was played were the Warsaw Autumn, musikprotokoll and Festival Mixtur.
His works have been performed in Ukraine (Kyiv and Lviv), Poland
(Warsaw and Lublin), Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod), Estonia (Narva), Austria (Graz), Spain (Barcelona and San Sebastián), Portugal (Lisbon), Italy (Trento and San Giustino), Mexico (Cholula), Brazil (São João del Rei) and USA (New York, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Fort Worth).