Tole is currently a professor at the University of Arts in Tirana, Albania. He is also the head of the Department for Cultural Heritage in Albania's Ministry of Culture alongside being president of the National Music Council and a member of the International Music Council.
Career
In 1987, he graduated from the Academy of Arts for composition. After working for three years as the artistic director at “Shtëpia e Kulturës” (“House of Culture”) in his hometown, Përmet, he was appointed as a professor of Albanian Music Folklore at the Faculty of Music. He was then hired as a professor of composition. While serving as a professor, he presented his PhD dissertation in the field of ethnomusicology, named: "“Structure and Semantics in the Instrumental Folk Music of Southern Albania”.
In 1994-95, he carried out the post-graduate studies in the field of Composition at Folkwang Hochschule, Essen-Germany, in the class of Prof. Wolfgang Hufschmidit and, in 1996, he carried out the postdoctoral studies in the Department of Musicology at the University of Athens, Greece. In 2000, he received the scientific title “Associate Professor”, and the one of “Professor” in 2004.
As an active representative of the new generation of the Albanian composers, Vasil S. Tole is known as one of the main protagonists of change, an initiator of new creative alternatives, one of the most decisive supporters of the concept for the restructuring of the Albanian folk music subject, serving to the identification of the identity and the novelties in contemporary music. Simultaneously, he dedicates himself to a broad activity related to studies and journalism, and participates in numerous music contests, conferences and roundtables in Albania, Kosovo, Greece, Italy, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Spain, England, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Canada, USA, China etc. He cooperates with artistic and research newspapers and magazines, with the Albanian Radio and Television; he is the author of tens of journalistic writings and monographies on music, as well as the winner of some important awards at national and international level, such as the winner of the first prize in composition “Dimitris Mitropoulos”, Athens 2001, with the opera “Eumenidet”.
After the 1990s, along with some colleagues, at the Academy of Arts, he becomes the initiator of the foundation and the management of some important music organisms, such as: the association “Muzikës së Re Shqiptare” (1993); the Albanian section of “The Rilm Abstract Literature of Music”, New York (1995); the Albanian section of CIOFF-it (1996); he has been the chairman of the Albanian Music Council since 1995, a member of the National Council of Music, Paris, a member of SEM-USA, Gema-Germany etc.
From 1997 to 1999, he was the Director of the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet. From 2001-2007, he was the Director of the Cultural Heritage Directorate at the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports. In 2005, he met all the obligations as an expert of ethnomusicology to prepare the file of the Albanian folk iso-polyphony, proclaimed by UNESCO as a “Masterpiece of Oral Heritage of Humanity”. In 2008, he was elected as a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Albania, in 2013, as a scientific secretary and in 2019 as the Deputy Chairperson of the Academy of Sciences of Albania.
Musical compositions
2022: “Koncert” për violinë dhe orkestër (dhe klavir)
2022: “Temë me variacione”, për fagot e piano (dhe orkestër harqesh)
2022: “Agoj 3”, “Temë me 12 variacione”, për piano solo
2022: “Broj, broj, broj”, për kor “a cappella”, SATB
2022: “Korba unë, qyqja unë”, për kor “a cappella”, SATB
