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. Yaron Deutsch

Yaron Deutsch (born in Israel in 1978) is a guitarist and artistic director of Ensemble Nikel. At age eighteen, he founded and led his first group – Ofek III – a fusion trio playing his own compositions. In 1999, he enrolled and did his studies at the “Rubin Academy for Music and Dance” in Jerusalem under the instruction of guitarists Steve Paskof and Yossi Levi. In 2006 together with saxophonist Gan Lev he founded the Tel Aviv based Ensemble for Contemporary Music – Ensemble Nikel.

With the ensemble and as a soloist he has been frequently collaborating with both established and young composers, giving world premiere performances to pieces by Michael Beil, Franck Bedrossian, Pierluigi Billone, Raphaël Cendo, Chaya Czernowin, Clemens Gadenstätter, Bernard Gander, Philippe Hurel, Eduardo Moguillansky, Marco Momi, Helmut Oehring, Stefan Prins and Michael Wertmüller to name a few.

As a guest performer he is regularly playing with Ensemble Klangforum Wien. Occasional guest performances he had with Ensemble Ascolta (Stuttgart), Ensemble Court Circuit (Paris), Ensemble Ictus (Brussels), Ensemble Phace (Vienna), The Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, RAI Orchestra (Turin), Vienna Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in which he played under conductors Baldur Brönnimann, Peter Eötvös, Johannes Kalitzke, Zubin Mehta, George Elie Octors, Emilio Pomarico and Pascal Rophé among others.

In addition he is also a member of the free improv trio – Ministry of Bad Decisions together with drummer Brian Archinal and composer-improviser, Stefan Prins. Besides being an active musician, Deutsch is also the director of “Tzlil Meudcan” (Hebrew: “Update Tone”) – The International Summer Course & Festival for Contemporary Music in Israel. It is a structure he initiated and established for the promotion of contemporary music where composers Chaya Czernowin & Steven Takasugi are leading the composition class and performers from various leading ensembles in Europe are coaching young performers in the practice of contemporary music performance.

Prof. Christian Dierstein

Christian Dierstein has established himself among the most interesting performers in the contempory music of our time. He studied under Bernhard Wulff at the Freiburg Musikhochschule and under Gaston Sylvestre in Paris. He is the winner of numerous competitions and received scholarships from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the Akademie Schloß Solitude, Stuttgart.
He is the percussionist of the ensemble recherche since 1988. Together with Marcus Weiss and Nic Hodges he forms the trio accanto. In addition to his performances of new music, he has focused on non-European music and free improvisation.
He has given solo concerts throughout Europe. In the season 2010/11 he was one of the Rising Stars from the European Concert Hall Organisation. Important appearances include: Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Athens , Berliner Festspiele, Brussel Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Huddersfield Festival, Lucerne Festival, Monday evening concerts Los Angeles, Rachmaninov Hall Moskau, Festival d'Autome Paris, Ircam Paris, Rome, Salzburg Festival, Schleswig Holstein Festival, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Wien Modern, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Zürich Festival für neue Musik and others.
He has recorded for several labels including Kairos, col legno, Stradivarius, Winter & Winter, neon and his recordings have been the recipients of numerous awards.
Christian Dierstein works together regulary with several of the greatest living composers, figures such as Hans Abrahamsen, Beat Furrer, Hugues Dufourt, Helmut Lachenmann, Rebecca Saunders, Salvatore Sciarrino.
Since 2001 he is Professor for percussion and new chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, Switzerland.
He gave masterclasses in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Genf, Madrid, Moskau, New York, Oslo, Peking, Valencia,Tiflis and others. Since 2008 he is one of the percussion tutor of the Darmstädter summer courses, since 2011 he is the percussion tutor of the Impuls academy in Graz, since 2014 regular guest teacher in Madrid and 2017 tutor of the Luzern academy.

Prof. Dr. Moritz Heffter

Moritz Heffter studied music theory and school music at the Freiburg University of Music (D) and Latin at Albert Ludwig University, Freiburg (D).

He has been a member of the academic staff of the Freiburg University of Music since 2012. The subject of his PhD thesis was 17th century music theory, in particular early triad concepts, and specifically the triga harmonica concept developed by Henricus Baryphonus. Prof. Heffter previously taught at the Institute for Early Music at the Trossingen University of Music, the HfK Bremen, the Department of Musicology at the Freiburg University of Music, and the HfM Karlsruhe.

The focus of his current work is the digital humanities, specifically the development and refinement of tools for use in both research and teaching. In recent years, a number of apps have been created which aim to support and supplement music theory teaching.

Prof. Heffter conducts and sings with a number of choral ensembles.

Prof. Jürg Henneberger

Der Dirigent und Pianist Jürg Henneberger, geboren 1957 in Luzern, studierte in Basel bei Jürg Wyttenbach und an der Hamburger Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst bei Klauspeter Seibel und Christoph von Dohnànyi.

Sehr bald machte er sich als Spezialist für Neue Musik einen Namen, was ihm Engagements bei den führenden Ensembles dieser Sparte eintrug. Die Gründung eines eigenen Ensembles, des «Ensemble Phoenix Basel», das er seit 1998 leitet, war letztlich die Konsequenz daraus, um mit ausgesuchten Musikern eigene Ideen adäquat umzusetzen.

Daneben ist Jürg Henneberger ein weithin gefragter künstlerischer Leiter grosser Opernproduktionen des mehrheitlich zeitgenössischen Repertoires. Hervorzuheben sind hier die Einstudierungen am Theater Basel «Aus Deutschland» von Mauricio Kagel und «Satyricon» von Bruno Maderna sowie die Produktionen unter der Regie von Christoph Marthaler «The Unanswered Question» (eingeladen zum Theatertreffen Berlin 1998) und «20th Century Blues» und die Schweizer Erstaufführung der Oper «Die Soldaten» von Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Am Staatstheater Hannover leitete er 2002 Alban Bergs «Lulu», an der Oper Köln 2003 die Uraufführung von Manfred Trojahns «Limonen aus Sizilien». Weitere wichtige Produktionen waren «in vain» (2003) sowie «Nacht» (2011) von Georg Friedrich Haas und «Unsichtbar Land» (2006) sowie «Gunten» (2008) von Helmut Oehring.

Von 1998 bis 2014 war er Präsident der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) Basel. Seit 1989 ist Jürg Henneberger Dozent für Partiturspiel, Kammermusik und Interpretation Zeitgenössischer Musik an der Hochschule für Musik Basel. Seit 2009 ist Jürg Henneberger Professor und gemeinsam mit Mike Svoboda und Marcus Weiss künstlerischer Leiter der 2009 gegründeten Studienrichtung «Master of Arts in Spezialisierter Musikalischer Performance Zeitgenössische Musik» an der Hochschule für Musik in Basel.

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. 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. Andrea Neumann

(*1968 Freiburg/Brsg) studied classical piano at the Berlin University of the Arts. Lives and works as a musician and composer in the fields of new music and experimental music in Berlin. She is part of the collective LABOR SONOR, which has curated a concert series since 2000 and festivals in Berlin since 2015.

Since 1996 she has been developing and playing her own instrument, the inner piano - an aluminium frame strung with strings, played by means of preparations and reinforced with the help of a mixing console and various pick-ups.

She has been instrumental in the development of Berlin's real-time music, which is situated between new music, improvisation, noise and sound art. Editor of echtzeitmusik berlin. self-determination of a scene, together with Burkhard Beins, Christian Kesten, Gisela Nauck, Wolke-Verlag Hofheim

Concert and festival performances in Europe, the USA, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China and Japan.

Composition commissions from Deutschlandfunk, Bayrischer Rundfunk, MDR Leipzig, the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, EMS Stockholm, Nyy Musikk Oslo, among others

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. Sarah Maria Sun

Sarah Maria Sun is known as one of the foremost and most extraordinary performers in the contemporary music scene. Her repertoire currently spans around 1500 compositions from the 16th to the 21st century, including more than 350 world premieres. She has a close working relationship with a wide variety of composers, including Helmut Lachenmann, Heinz Holliger, Salvatore Sciarrino and Bernhard Lang, among many others. North German Radio (NDR) has dedicated portrait concerts to her in 2012, 2016 and 2018.

In 2017 (“Lohengrin” by Salvatore Sciarrino) and 2019 (“Psychoses 4.48” by Philip Venables) she was nominated as Singer of the Year.

In the 2019/20 season, Sarah Maria Sun has performed Schönberg‘s Pierrot Lunaire and Weill‘s Seven Deadly Sins with the Ensemble Modern and HK Gruber at the Beethovenfest Bonn. She sang the role of Eliza Doolittle in Frederick Loewe‘s My Fair Lady in New Year’s Eve/New Year’s performances with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Alan Gilbert at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Furthermore, she interpreted the world premiereFragmente einer Unzeit by Iris ter Shiphorst with the Ensemble Modern and Enno Poppe at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam and at November Music in S’Hertogenbosch. Concerts at Wien Modern, the Tonhalle Maag Zürich, the Osterfestival Tirol, the Philharmonie Luxembourg i. a. will complete the season. Summer 2021 she will give her debut as „Compagna“ in Luigi Nono‘s „Intolleranza“ at the Salzburger Festspiele with Ingo Metzmacher and the Viennese Philharmonics. She will also sing her debut as „Lulu“ at the mexican premiere of this Berg’s Opera in Mexico City.

Sarah Maria Sun regularly performs as a soloist in concert halls and festivals such as the Suntory Hall Tokyo, the Muziekgebow Amsterdam, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Auditorio National Madrid, the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonic, the Biennale Paris, Venice and Munich, the Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna and famous festivals in Witten, Donaueschingen, Herrenhausen and Cervantino and Vertice in Mexico.

Her tremendous adaptability is demonstrated on a regular basis on the music- theater stage. She has appeared at the opera houses in Zurich, Basel, Dresden, Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Leipzig, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Zagreb, and the Opéra Bastille and the Opéra Comique in Paris. She shows her skill for haunting theatrical and musical interpretation time and again in the depiction of complex female figures. In particular, the monodramas Yes I Will Yes by Dieter Schnebel (Elbphilharmonie Hamburg), Carlotas Zimmer by Arturo Fuentes with Klangforum Wien (Klangspuren Schwaz), Lohengrin by Salvatore Sciarrino (Salzburg Easter Festival), Psychoses 4.48 by Philip Venables (Semper Zwei Dresden) and Kolik by Jannik Giger, Leo Hoffmann and Benjamin von Bebber (Gare du Nord Basel) are especially noteworthy.

Sarah Maria Sun has performed with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Alan Gilbert, Thomas Hengelbrock, Susanna Mälkki, Peter Rundel, Heinz Holliger, together with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the North, Bavarian, South-West and West German Radio

Orchestras, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Antwerp and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras and ensembles such as musikFabrik Köln, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Mosaik, Ensemble Intercontemporain as well as the string quartets Diotima, Arditti, Minguet and Signum.

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 and other awards. The album Modern Lied won the Coups de Coers. In spring 2020, her two latest and most contrasting albums were released by Mode Records: HARAWI with the famous song cycle by Olivier Messiaen (awarded with the “What a performance! 2019” award) and KILLER INSTINCTS, satirising a new generation of demagougues, with Musical- Pop- and Rocksong-Covers.

Sarah Maria Sun studied singing in Cologne and Stuttgart and most importantly worked with Darinka Segota and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. She regularly gives masterclasses for vocal music from the 20th and 21st centuries; she has taught at universities and conservatoires in Oslo, Harvard, Chicago, Stockholm, Zurich, Bale, Rostock, Moscow, Dresden, Hannover, Graz or Berlin. Since 2019 she is teaching on a regular basis in Lucerne.

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. 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.

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.

Prof. Qiming Yuan

Qiming Yuan was born in Shanghai into a family of musicians. His musical education began at a very early age, first learning to play the violin before moving on to the piano and later the trombone. When he was 11, he entered a music academy in Shanghai, where he specialised in the trombone. Before long, he discovered a passion for composition and began taking classes. Radio Shanghai broadcast his first work for piano, which Qiming Yuan performed himself. Soon afterwards, he became the youngest student of composition under Prof. F. Goldmann at the Berlin University of Arts (UdK). His studies also included orchestral conducting under Prof. H. M. Rabenstein and Prof. M. Husmann. As an exchange student in Copenhagen, he studied composition under Hans Abrahamsen. He was one of 200 entrants at the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors, and was named among the 10 finalists. His keen interest in connecting with music on a deeper level led him to study music theory under Prof. Fladt. Having graduated from the UdK Berlin in composition, orchestral conducting and music theory, he taught at the HfM Weimar and the HfM Dresden. In 2009 he was appointed Professor of Music Theory at the FHNW Academy of Music in Basel. Alongside his teaching commitments, he successfully completed a postgraduate course in Jazz Piano at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He has taught composition at the HfMT Cologne since 2017. He has also published many research papers and presented widely in Europe and Asia. His current work focuses on the relationship between cognition, interpretation and perception; the rhythmical function in music; the philosophy of music; historical events and music.

Prof. Alfred Zimmerlin

Alfred Zimmerlin, born in 1955, is an improvising musician (cello) who has enjoyed a prodigious international concert career, playing with many different formations, such as KARL ein KARL, the Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin Trio, and Zimmerlin-Stoffner-Meier. His oeuvre as a composer is equally prodigious and comprises pieces for piano, chamber music (with and without live electronics), vocal music, orchestral music, and music for theatre.  There are wealth of recordings documenting Alfred’s Zimmerlin’s output as both an improvising musician and composer. He has also won awards for his work, including the Kulturpreis des Kantons Zürich in 2014 and the Swiss Music Award in 2016. He has been a Professor of Free Improvisation at the Musikakademie Basel and the FHNW Academy of Music /Sonic Space Basel since 2012.

Fred Frith

Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith has been active across a broad spectrum of music-making since the late 1960s, starting with the iconic rock collective Henry Cow. In a career spanning almost 50 years, Fred is renowned as a ground-breaking electric guitarist, improviser, and composer for dance and film. Through bands like Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, and Cosa Brava, he has managed to keep one foot in the rock world while branching out into whatever other musical fields pique his curiosity.

His compositions have been performed by groups ranging from Arditti Quartet and the Ensemble Modern to Concerto Köln, from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to ROVA Sax Quartet, from Robert Wyatt to Hieronymus Firebrain. Film music credits include Rivers and Tides by Thomas Riedelsheimer, The Tango Lesson by Sally Potter, Werner Penzel’s Zen for Nothing, and Peter Mettler’s Gods, Gambling and LSD. His collaborations with choreographer Amanda Miller have continued for over 20 years. An extensive catalogue of recordings is available on Tzadik, Winter & Winter, Intakt, ReR, and his own label Fred Records, among others.
Fred has performed or recorded with key figures in contemporary music including, for example, Lotte Anker, Derek Bailey, Gavin Bryars, Sylvie Courvoisier, Alvin Curran, Brian Eno, Evelyn Glennie, George Lewis, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, The Residents, Christian Wolff, and John Zorn.

Since 1999 he has taught composition and improvisation at Mills College in Oakland, California, along with masterclasses, workshops and/or lectures throughout Europe, North and South America, and in Australia and Japan. Apart from teaching in Basel and at Mills, he is guest professor at the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, Chile. Fred is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzels’ award-winning documentary film Step Across the Border.

Dr. Anne-May Krüger

Anne-May Krüger’s work is marked by its variety and scope, both on and behind the stage. The mezzo-soprano has appeared internationally as an acclaimed performer especially of contemporary music. She is also active as a librettist and holds a doctoral degree in musicology from the University of Basel.

Born in Berlin/Germany, Anne-May studied at the University of Music Karlsruhe, as well as with Rudolf Piernay. Early in her career she appeared at the State Opera in Stuttgart, and has been a guest artist with the Nationaltheater Mannheim and Theater Basel, among others. Since 2012, she has been a frequent guest at the Lucerne Festival, premiering music-theater productions from Alfred Zimmerlin, Michael Wertmüller, Mike Svoboda, and Michel Roth. A recording of Michel Roth’s mono-opera Im Bau was released in December 2019 by the label WERGO. Further collaborations include, among others, composers Kurt Schwertsik, Manos Tsangaris, Andreas Eduardo Frank, and Hans Tutschku and the South African artist William Kentridge.

Anne-May Krüger works with groups such as ensemble recherche (Freiburg), Ensemble Ascolta (Stuttgart), Ensemble Phoenix Basel, and the Mondrian Ensemble (Basel). Together with Christian Zehnder, she has been a guest singer with Ensemble SoloVoices (Basel), performing Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Stimmung at Lucerne Festival, Stockhausen-Stiftung Kürten, Festival "Imago Dei" (Krems) and ENSEMS (Valencia). Anne-May is a member of the ensemble æquatuor (Basel/Zürich) and Infinity Quartett (Basel). Opera productions have led to collaborations with conductors Bernhard Epstein, Michael Wendeberg and Titus Engel, as well as with stage directors Georges Delnon, Hendrik Müller, Massimo Rocchi, Johannes Schmid and Joachim Schlömer. She is a regular guest at renowned festivals, particularly for new music, such as "Wien Modern" (Vienna), "ZeitRäume Basel", "Rümlingen Festival" (CH), "MaerzMusik" (Berlin), "London Ear", "NUNC" (Northwestern University/Evanston) and "Contempuls" (Prague).

In 2021 her first libretto for Mike Svoboda's chamber opera Die Katze, die ihre eigenen Wege ging after Rudyard Kipling's The Cat Who Walked By Himself was premiered at Landestheater Linz/Austria. She is currently working on a new libretto Adam und Eva, based on Peter Hacks’s play by the same name which will be set to music by Mike Svoboda. The piece, a commission of the Schwetzinger Festspiele/Germany in cooperation with the Landestheater Linz/Austria, will be premiered in 2025.

As a musicologist, Anne-May’s activities focus on new music performance practice. From 2011 to 2021 she was part of the research department at the Hochschule für Musik Basel, where, in 2018 she has also started teaching. Currently, she is in charge of the development of two new Masters programs. Since fall 2020, she has also held the position of a lecturer at the department for musicology at the University of Basel. Her articles have been published in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Dissonance, PFAU, Laaber-Verlag and at Brepols Publishers Turnhout. She has been invited for presentations and lecture performances Europe-wide. In 2022 her dissertation Musik über Stimmen was published at Wolke Verlag Hochheim. Anne-May’s doctorate was funded by the Swiss National Funds.

In 2021 she founded, together with composer and sound performer Andreas Eduardo Frank, the duo frKRr. Their first program what you see – is what you get – is what you hear was premiered to great acclaim in Basel/Switzerland in April 2021, featuring compositions for voice, video and electronics by Paul Clift (world premiere) and Andreas Eduardo Frank as well as Luc Ferrari’s Monologos I for voice and tape machines. Their new program Music for Unicorns will be premiered in 2022 and includes a collective creation with composer and performer Chloé Bieri as well as a new composition by Mike Svoboda.