Prof. Mike Svoboda

The composer, trombone player and conductor Mike Svoboda is considered among the most innovative and versatile musicians of his generation. He grew up in Chicago and, after his composition and conducting studies, came to Germany with the help of a BMI Award to Young Composers in 1982. From 1984 to 1996 he worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen; during this time he stopped composing. His collaborations with Stockhausen and composers like Eötvös, Haas, Hosokawa, Lachenmann, Rihm, Smolka and Zappa have led Svoboda to premiere a plethora of new works over the last 35 years. After a self-imposed break of close to 20 years, Mike Svoboda began composing again in 2000. Since then, he has received commissions from festivals, orchestras and theatres, includes the State Opera Hannover and Stuttgart, the National Theatre Mannheim, the Südwestrundfunk [public broadcaster in southwest Germany] the ECLAT Festival and Lucerne Festival.

Mike Svoboda is a Professor at the FHNW Academy of Music in Basel. Together with his colleagues Marcus Weiss and Jürg Henneberger, he oversees the artistic direction of the MA in Performance, with a Major in Contemporary Music.

Prof. Svetlana Maraš

Svetlana Maraš (1985) is composer and sound artist from Serbia. She works at the intersection of experimental music, sound art and new media. Her musical work is finding adequate form of expression in different media, genres and representational contexts and encompasses live electronic music performance, electro-acoustic composition, radiophonic art, sound and media installations. She has been musically educated from an early age. Graduated at the renowned Aalto University (Helsinki) where she worked as a research assistant, she also received training in composition and art at places like Bang on a Can Summer Institute (MASSMoCA), Columbia University - School of the Arts, Mozarteum Summer Academy, KlangKunstBuhne at UDK (Berlin), The Berklee Summer School, Darmstadt International Summer Course  and many other places.

Maraš has presented her work internationally, at venues, festivals and events such as CTM (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), House of Electronic Arts (Basel), Espace Multimedia Gantner (Bourogne), Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), Ausland (Berlin), Izlog Suvremenog Zvuka (Zagreb), ICMC (New York), International Rostrum of Composers (Wroclaw), ISEA (Dubai), International Music Institute (Darmstadt), Orpheus Institute (Ghent) and National radios of Austria, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Croatia, Slovenia and many other countries.

​Maraš was awarded Vitomir Bogić prize by Radio Belgrade, for best, young radiophonic composer. Her composition Dirty thoughts was recommended work at the International Rostrum of composers in Wroclaw in, and her radiophonic piece Jezik (premiered at ORF) was shortlisted for Prix Italia award. Maraš was jury member for Media Art Prize at Bauhaus University and keynote speaker at Audio paper symposium at Inter Arts Center in Malmo. Her article 'Thingification of compositional process - emergence and autonomy of extra-musical object in Western Art Music' was published as a book chapter.  Maraš is co-curator at 4fakultät concert series in Hamburg.
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Svetlana Maraš is composer-in-residence and artistic director at  Radio Belgrade's Electronic Studio.

Since autumn 2021 she is co-director of the Electronic Studio Basel and professor for creative music technology at the Music Academie Basel.

Prof. Volker Böhm

Volker Böhm, born in 1971 in Freiburg (D), is a musician, audio designer and programmer. He currently lives and works in Basel. Alongside his teaching commitments at the Electronic Studio of the FHNW Academy of Music, he is heavily involved in various art, music and media projects in a range of fields —New Music, theatre, (sound) installations and electroacoustic improvisation.

Prof. Johannes Kreidler

Johannes Kreidler (1980) studied composition, electronic music and music theory in Freiburg (D) and The Hague, under leading lights like Mathias Spahlinger and Orm Finnendahl. In 2012 he won the Kranichstein Music Prize awarded by the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik [Darmstadt Summer University for New Music]. In 2019 he joined the FHNW Academy of Music in Basel as a professor of Composition.

Performances (selected): Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Ultraschall Berlin, MaerzMusik Berlin, Foreign Affairs Berlin, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Eclat Stuttgart, La Biennale di Veneziag, Gaudeamus Music Week Amsterdam, Warschauer Herbst, Biennale de Musique en Scène Lyon, Ultima Festival Oslo, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Musica Straßburg, MusicAcoustica Festival Peking, Liquid Architecture Melbourne

Publications: Musik mit Musik – Texte 2005-2011, and Sätze über musikalische Konzeptkunst. Texte 2012-2018

Prof. Michel Roth

Michel Roth, born 1976 in Altdorf, lives in Lucerne. He is professor of composition and music theory at the FHNW Academy of Music Basel and a member of its research department. As long-time director of the Lucerne Studio for Contemporary Music, he worked with Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann and Peter Eötvös, among others. Many radio and CD productions document his work, for which he has received numerous prizes and grants. His works can be heard regularly at international music festivals, including the opera "Im Bau" (2012, Theater Basel, Zurich, Barcelona) and the depressive operetta "Die Künstliche Mutter" (2016, Lucerne Festival, Gare du Nord Basel). He also researches and publishes on music-theoretical and interdisciplinary topics with a focus on game theory and indeterminacy (e.g. David Tudor), collaborative art (e.g. Dieter Roth and his "Rarely Heard Music") and organology (e.g. trombone and percussion playing techniques).

Prof. Caspar Johannes Walter

was born in Frankfurt/Main in 1964. He studied composition with V. D. Kirchner (Wiesbaden) as well as with J. Fritsch and C. Barlow (Cologne Conservatory of Music, 1985-90).
In 1985 he was cofounder of the Cologne-based Thürmchen Verlag (Publishing House). He has received several major composition awards, a CD with chamber music works by Caspar Johannes Walter released by the German Council of Music on the Label Wergo has been awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 1998.
His interests as an interpreter - he is cellist in the Thürmchen Ensemble, which he also co-founded in 1991 - are focused primarily on young composers from the areas of experimental music and musical theatre.
In 2002/2003 Caspar Johannes Walter was teacher of composition and composer in Residence at the University of Birmingham/UK, since 2006-13 he was professor for composition in Stuttgart/Germany and since 2013 at the Musikakademie Basel/Switzerland. In 2014 he was elected into the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, where he is at the moment curating the international project Labor Beethoven 2020, that focusses the view of the young generation of composers towards the renewing of intrinsic musical ideas in the spirit of Beethovens laboratorium artificiosum.

Yaron Deutsch (Tel Aviv, 1978) is particularly known for his work in the field of contemporary music. He is the founder and artistic director of the Quartet Nikel and a frequent guest with the most renowned European ensembles and orchestras in the field of contemporary music. He plays regularly with the ensembles Klangforum Wien and Musikfabrik. As a soloist he has performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philharmonie Luxembourg, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI (Turin), the SWR Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has played under the conductors Sylvain Cambreling, Titus Engel, Peter Eötvös, Zubin Mehta, Emilio Pomàrico, Peter Rundel and Ilan Volkov, to name a few. He has released recordings on the Col Legno, Kairos, Neos, Sub Rosa and Wergo labels. In addition to his artistic activities, he is a lecturer in the guitar class at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, and has also curated and directed the international festival for contemporary chamber music in Tel Aviv - "Tzlil Meudcan" ("updated tone") - since 2010.

Sarah Maria Sun is known as one of the foremost vocal performers in the contemporary music scene. Her repertoire currently spans more than 1000 compositions from the 16th to the 21st century, including 350 world premieres. She regularly performs as a soloist in renowned concert halls and festivals worldwide. At leading opera houses and stages she created complex female figures in music theaters, operas and monodramas. For her role as Elsa in Sciarrino’s Lohengrin (2017) as well as for her performance in Philip Venables 4.48 Psychoses (2019) she was nominated as singer of the year. From 2007-2014, she was the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a chamber ensemble of seven singers that has been one of the world’s leading pioneers of contemporary music for decades. 

Sarah Maria Sun’s discography includes more than 30 CDs, some of which have been awarded prizes. In 2017, four of her six new releases were nominated for the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik prize. In spring 2020, some most contrasting albums were released: HARAWI with songs by Olivier Messiaen (mode records, awarded with the “What a performance!” award) and KILLER INSTINCTS (mode records), a Rock-Pop-Satire on a new generation of narcissistic demagougues, with songs by Joe Walshe, Randy Newman, Alan Price and many more. The album Les Espaces électroacoutiques (col legno) was awarded with the „Deutsche Schallplattenpreis“. 

Sarah is also an illustrator and author of children’s books and releases songs with the band Titillating Tofu. 

Prof. Marcus Weiss

Having studied the saxophone at the FHNW Academy of Music in Basel under Iwan Roth, Marcus Weiss moved to Chicago where he studied philosophy und saxophone (under Frederick L. Hemke) at Northwestern University. In 1989 he won the Soloist Prize of the Schweizerischer Tonkünstlerverein [Association of Swiss Musicians]. During his soloist career, he performed with an array of European orchestras and ensembles, as well as the Trio Accanto chamber ensemble and the saxophone ensemble Xasax/Paris. He has collaborated with a variety of composers, who have written works for him. They include Aperghis, Cage, Furrer, Globokar, Haas, Hosokawa, Kyburz, Lachenmann, Netti, Prins, Saunders, Sciarrino, Stockhausen and Vassena. His textbook ‘The Techniques of Saxophone Playing’ was published by Verlag Bärenreiter.

Prof. Weiss also gives masterclasses at European universities (e.g. Paris, Madrid, London, Berlin, Vienna, Porto and Riga) and US universities. He has worked for many years as a lecturer at the Darmstädter Ferienkursen für neue Musik [Darmstadt summer university for New Music] and at the Ensemble-Akademie IMPULS in Graz, Austria. He continues to curate New Music festivals (Rümlingen and Zurich). Marcus Weiss is a professor of Saxophone and Chamber Music at the FHNW Academy of Music in Basel.

2002 absolvierte Dirk Koy das Studium an der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel (HGK Basel) im Bereich Visuelle Kommunikation.
Er arbeitete 2003 – 2005 bei KMS-Team München in den Bereichen Grafik und Bewegtbild. In dieser Zeit war er unter anderem an der Entwicklung des medienübergreifenden Corporate Designs für Porsche Design beteiligt, ausgezeichnet durch «ADC Deutschland» und «red dot communication award».
Während seiner Tätigkeit als Assistent und später als Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Institut Visuelle Kommunikation der HGK Basel 2005–2011, war er an der Entwicklung des Erscheinungsbildes für das Forschungsprojekt eikones NFS Bildkritik massgeblich beteiligt.
2007 war er Mitbegründer von «Equipo» ein Büro für visuelle Kommunikation. Der Tätigkeitsbereich von Equipo umfasst Grafik, Animation/Video und Interaktion.
Im Lauf der letzten Jahre konzentrierte sich Dirk Koy's Interesse auf den Bereich des bewegten Bildes. Für die SRF1 TV-Sendung Focus Blind Date gestaltete er animierte Titelgrafiken und Biografien. Die Arbeit erhielt 2016 Bronze bei den Bassawards in der Kategorie «Best TV Programme Branding». Er realisierte einige animierte Musikvisualisierungen wie beispielsweise «The Time Tunnel» für die Musiklegende Boris Blank (Yello) oder «The City» für die Band «Five Years Older», welche weltweit an zahlreichen Festivals gezeigt wurden. 2012 erhielt «The City» die Auszeichnung «Honorary Mention» des «Prix Ars Electronica» und gewann 2015 den 1. Preis des Visual Music Awards. 2016 gestaltete er Animationen für das Yello-Konzert in Berlin.
Seit 2011 arbeitet er zudem als Dozent für Time Based Media im Institut Visuelle Kommunikation der HGK Basel.
2016 gründete er das Büro für Motion Design und Experimentalfilm «Dirk Koy Bild und Bewegung».

Hannah Weinberger studierte an der Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, wo sie 2013 mit einem Master of Fine Arts (Vertiefung Mediale Künste) abschloss.

Hannah Weinberger schafft immersive Erfahrungsräume, sei es über assoziativ verdichtete Sound- und Videoinstallationen, die sich über mehrere Kanäle zu einer Gesamtkomposition vermischen, oder über orchestrierte musikalische Live- Performances, die auf eine gemeinschaftliche, prozessorientierte und ergebnisoffene Kunstproduktion abzielen. Für die vielschichtigen Sound- und Videocollagen greift sie auf ihr stetig wachsendes Archiv aus Klang- und Bildmaterial zurück, das aus vorgefertigten Tonelementen aus Online-Datenbanken, digitalen Audioprogrammen und Studioaufnahmen besteht sowie aus eigenen field recordings – persönlichen Momentaufnahmen in bewegten Bildern, die die Künstlerin auf ihren Reisen mit einer digitalen Kamera festhält. Die Stimmungen, die die Künstlerin mit ihren Arbeiten evoziert, verarbeitet sie auch zu Partituren, mit der sie Musikerinnen zur freien Improvisation anleitet, und die sich in ortsspezifischen Live-Performances mit ihren eigenen Soundtracks verbinden. Stets geht es in Hannah Weinbergers künstlerischer Praxis darum, mit dem Umfeld in Resonanz zu treten und einen subtilen, aber nachhallenden Bruch mit der vertrauten Wahrnehmung zu erzielen. Von 2011 bis 2013 leitete sie zusammen mit Tenzing Barshee, Nikola Dietrich und Scott Cameron Weaver den Projektraum Elaine im Innenhof des Museums für Gegenwartskunst Basel. Schon früh in ihrem künstlerischen Werdegang präsentierte sie ihre Arbeiten in zahlreichen Einzel- und Gruppenausstellungen im In- und Ausland, unter anderem im Centre culturel suisse (2017), Kunstverein, Braunschweig (2017); Freymond-Guth Ltd. fine Arts, Basel (2016); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2016); Kunstverein Hamburger Bahnhof, Hamburg (2015); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Kunsthaus Bregenz (2014); Lyon Biennale, Lyon (2013); Kunsthalle Basel, Swissinstitute New York (2012).

Hannah Weinberger lebt und arbeitet in Basel. Seit 2013 ist sie im Vorstand des Vereins Kunsthalle Basel.