Elvira Garifzyanova was born into a family of professional musicians. She studied piano and composition at the State Conservatory in Russia. Further studies in composition and electronic music in Germany and Switzerland followed. In 2012 she completed a one-year course in music informatics at the IRCAM Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music in Paris. She received various prizes and scholarships from international competitions and artist residencies and works with international musicians, ensembles, and orchestras. Her compositions have been performed at numerous international festivals for new music, including the Archipel Festival Geneva; Music Biennale Zagreb; Giga Hertz Award Festival ZKM Karlsruhe; 20th New Music Festival Sound Ways in Saint Petersburg; Russische Kulturtage in Freiburg 2017; EXPO Milano 2015; 40th International Music Festival in Munich; Antifonia Festival in Cluj-Napoca; next_generation 4.0 Festival ZKM Karlsruhe; Festival of Arts in Zurich; Mixtur Festival Barcelona; Inaudita Early Music Tuscan Festival, Pisa; CEME Festival Tel Avi; EviMus—4th Saarbrücken Days for Electroacoustic and Visual Music. Her pieces have also been performed at the following music centers and concert halls: Center for New Music San Francisco; IRCAM Paris;  Megaron—The Athens Concert Hall; Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich; Kultur-Casino Bern; Elastic Arts Chicago; Budapest Music Center; Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna; BKA-Theater Berlin; Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; Saal Bâtiment des Forces Motrice, Geneva.

During her fellowship, Elvira Garifzyanova will work on new compositions. In her work she is interested in experimenting with acoustic, instrumental, and electronic sounds in order to discover their specific potential for further development. These sounds, which are related to playing techniques and spatial possibilities, will be analyzed and described in order to make them usable as a specific musical resource for new compositions.