Adrian Pop (b. Cluj, September 10, 1951) took his first music lessons from his father, the renowned choir conductor and professor Dorin Pop, and then studied composition at the Gheorghe Dima National Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca (1971-1976), where he studied with Sigismund Toduță and Cornel Țăranu. During the same period, he received important and lasting influences from the composer Ștefan Niculescu and the folklorist Traian Mârza.
A promising talent, Adrian Pop won his first composition prizes while he was still a student: the Dinu Lipatti Prize and the National Prize of Art Institutes (1974). A series of distinctions further marked the path of his compositional career: the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists Prize (1978, 1981, 1989, 2011, 2015), the George Enescu Prize of the Romanian Academy (Bucharest, 1996) and prizes at the international composition competitions in Tours and Arezzo (1979), Roodepoort (1983), Trento (1983, 1985, 1987), Spittal an der Drau (1986), Gran Canaria (2003).
He has a long-standing collaboration with the prestigious Transilvania State Philharmonic Orchestra, as secretary and artistic consultant (1983-2004) and general director (1991-1995). Between 2008 and 2012 he was rector of the Gheorghe Dima National Music Academy, and is currently professor of composition at the same institution.
As musical coordinator and co-director of the AdHoc Ensemble, then as artistic director of the Cluj Modern International Festival of Contemporary Music, he contributed to the promotion of contemporary music creation in the Cluj and national cultural landscape.
Recognized as an outstanding personality of Romanian musical life, Adrian Pop was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the President of Romania (2008) and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in the rank of Knight, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture (2012).
