Section: Musik

Andys Skordis (Cyprus, 1983) is a composer of contemporary music with a catalogue of more than 80 works, including operas, orchestral and chamber music, gamelan music, site-specific works as well as music for dance, theatre and film. His music is often characterised as archaic and dark, leading to performances often being likened to rituals or ceremonial events. His works have been performed worldwide and he has received international recognition through awards such as the BUMA Toonzetters Prize, one of the most important prizes in the Netherlands, as well as awards from ISCM, Fedora Platform, Third Coast Percussion Group, Cyprus Symphony Orchestra and others. He recently received the Berlin Opera Prize 2022 and the Black Pencil Prize 2020. In addition to his work as a composer, he is the founder of the contemporary music ensemble PATSIAOURA, an active performer in the field of free improvisation and a lecturer at the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam. Skordis studied composition at Berklee College of Music and Conservatorium Van Amsterdam, with additional studies in Carnatic music and Balinese gamelan at ISI Denpasar in Bali.

Abigél Varga was born in 1996 in Eger, Hungary. In 2018 she received a BA diploma in theatre and media composition as a student of Judit Varga and Zsófia Tallér, and in 2021 she received an MA diploma in composition as a student of Péter Tornyai, at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. Since October 2021 until 2023 she studies composition masterclass in the class of Moritz Eggert at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München. In 2022 her short opera Coded Bodies was performed at the Autor:innenwerkstatt at the Studiobühne Munich. In 2023, Abigél was selected by Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann together with seven other young composers from over a hundred applicants as one of the participants in the Lucerne Festival’s composers’ seminar.

Malte Giesen studied composition/computer music at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart with Marco Stroppa and Oliver Schneller, followed by further studies at the CNSM Paris with Gérard Pesson, at the HfM Berlin with Hanspeter Kyburz and electroacoustic music with Wolfgang Heiniger. He was a scholarship recipient of the GdF MH Stuttgart, Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation and the Foundation of the HfM Berlin, Elsa Neumann Scholarship Berlin. He won the German Music Competition Composition 2009, the Master Course Orchestra Composition of the RSO Stuttgart 2012, the Competition New Scenes III of the Deutsche Oper Berlin 2015, the Composition Prize Carl von Ossietzky of the City of Oldenburg 2016 and the Composition Prize of the City of Stuttgart 2017. In 2018 he was selected as representative composer of Germany in the ECCO project of the ECSA General Assembly in Brussels. In 2021 he was a composition laureate of the Ernst-von-Siemens Music Foundation. He served as a lecturer for contemporary improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe and for electroacoustic music at the HfM “Hanns Eisler” Berlin. Since 2021 he is the director of the studio for electroacoustic music at the Akademie der Künste Berlin.

Misha Cvijović is a Serbian composer, pianist and sound artist living in Berlin. She studied piano and composition at the University of Arts in Belgrade and at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin. She writes contemporary orchestral music, chamber music, electroacoustic music, opera/musical theater, stage and film music. Misha’s compositions have been performed at numerous festivals and concerts, including Heroines of Sound, KLANG Copenhagen, Opening of the Month of Contemporary Music Berlin, SONIC MATTER Zurich, MaerzMusik, Impuls Graz, Klangwerkstatt Festival für Neue Musik Berlin, Unerhörte Musik, Saarbrücker Filmfestival Max-Ophüls, Rotterdam Filmfestival, Achtung Berlin, Cannes Film Festival as well as at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf, Konzerthaus Berlin, Sophiensaele and the Neuköllner Oper in Berlin . During her opera and theater career, she has worked as a composer, pianist/analog synthesizer performer, arranger and as a musical director with directors such as Fabian Gerhardt, Peter Kastenmüller, Ulrike Schwab, Johannes Müller, Jan Sobrie, Aliénor Dauches and Miloš Lolić. Misha is a scholarship holder of the scholarship program for professional Berlin artists and curators of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe in Berlin 2021 and the Musikfonds Berlin 2021.

Adapter is a German-Icelandic new music ensemble based in Berlin. The core of the group is a quartet of flute, clarinet, harp and percussion. Together with permanently selected instrumentalists, chamber music ensembles with up to 10 players emerge from this core. In addition to numerous world premieres, Adapter devotes himself to an individual and international repertoire of contemporary music in concerts and in the studio. In its own projects and co-productions, the ensemble also tests cross-border working methods in various genres. In workshops, acquired knowledge about composition, study and performance of contemporary music is shared with composers, instrumentalists and other creative people worldwide. With a progressive and powerful style, the Ensemble Adapter strives to make an authentic contribution to current developments in the cultural scene.

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Foto: María Guðrún Rúnarsdóttir

studied conducting, piano, and singing in Lübeck and Karlsruhe. 2003-2006 he worked as a solo répétiteur and Kapellmeister at the Volkstheater Rostock with numerous with numerous rehearsals in musical theater, conducting in concert and opera. Since 2006 he has worked in Berlin, Baden-Baden, Rostock, Hamburg and Kiel as well as at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Festival European Weeks Passau. He has musically productions in recent years include the German première of the German premiere of 13 – A New Musical, Der kleine Horrorladen, Tonight: Lola Horrorladen, Tonight: Lola Blau, The Last Five Years, Die Fledermaus, Hänsel und Gretel, and most recently at the Neuköllner Oper Die Weise von Liebe and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke (Viktor Ullmann). His career as a solo pianist, chamber musician and accompanist has taken him to numerous international stages. He also plays regularly as pianist for the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Rundfunkchor Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Markus Syperek was as Musical Director of the Brothers Grimm Festival Hanau from 2014 to
2018, he was responsible for all musical productions of the festival. In addition, since 2018, he has held a teaching position in classical voice at the UdK Berlin and works as a composer and arranger for various theater and music publishers.

Originally from Barcelona, Marc Sambola is a composer, musical director and stage director.
He has composed numerous works for different theaters in Spain and worldwide such as musical “El Projecte Dels Bojos, Una Utopia Musical” for La Barni Teatre, “Si Quieres Dulce No Pidas Calamares” and “Campamentos” for Microteatro in Madrid and Mimitea3 in Barcelona. Furthermore, he composed for Lazzigag’s Pruduccions, for Jumping Ducks, for Aules, for Agv and for Los Angeles Rock Opera. He also arranged the musicas “Ojos Verdes Miguel de Molina In Memoriam” and “Le Llaman COPLA” for the Barni Teatre, “CINC” for the Versus Teatre, “Soundtrack” by Roger Berruezo, the show “Asufre” by Dei Furbi, the themes for “A Grup Vocal” and the studio album “Punto de Rocío” by Daniel Anglès.
His directorial works include “Ojos Verdes Miguel de Molina In Memoriam,” “El Projecte dels Bojos, Una Utopia Musical” and “Le Llaman COPLA” for the Barni Teatre, “Midsummer, A Play With Songs” for Tantarantana Teatre, Albena Pruduccions and Tanttaka Teatroa, “El Partit”, “Polski”, “Per si no ens tornem a veure”, “Artaban, la llegenda des quart Rei Mag”, “Tom Sawzer Detectiu”.
As a director of the finalists of the Spanish television format “Oh Happy Day” and as a coach of the third season of this show, he achieved national attention.

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Marc Sambola (c) Marina Castells

Born 1959 in Westphalia. After studying to be a teacher, he first appeared in the cultural underground as a composer and actor in the political cabaret “FORTSCHROTT”, fields of work were the street, the demonstration, the cultural festival, Brokdorf, Startbahn West – you can read about it in the history books.
Then composer and actor in the legendary Berlin underground musical troupe “COLLEGE OF HEARTS”. With our performances we were style-setting for the development of a “New German Musical”, cheeky, fast, cabaret-like and mobile (biggest successes: KING KURT and BLUTIGER HONIG).
Parallel to this, work at the public theaters: Deutsches Theater, Berliner Ensemble, Maxim-Gorki-Theater, Komödie am Kudamm in Berlin and numerous theaters in the German-speaking area.center of activity then became the NEUKÖLLNER OPER in Berlin. Together with the author and director Peter Lund, a series of very successful musicals were created, which are less indebted to the American musical and more to the European musical comedy or operetta. 

The STEGREIF.orchestra is a symphony orchestra, which has the great classics
in its repertoire. However, what is unique about these thirty young international
musicians is that they open up completely new paths to classical music for themselves and the audience. Spiced with folklore, jazz, klezmer, blues and rock, they create impressive new interpretations of well-known repertoire with performative and also visual power. STEGREIF explores new worlds of sound and constantly tries out new musical genre fusions. In doing so, the ensemble always performs without sheet music, without a conductor and without chairs. The resulting freedom creates space for improvisation and movement. The concert hall, the
The concert hall, the auditorium, the stands, everything becomes a stage and allows the audience a unique concert experience. The ensemble is under the direction of Juri de Marco and since its debut concert at RADIALSYSTEM V in October 2015 has performed in a variety of projects on different stages in Germany (including Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival). The musicians belong to a generation of artists* who combine classical music, improvisation and jazz at the highest artistic level. Their inspiration lies in creating a new form of
their inspiration lies in developing a new performance practice that is not limited to reproduction alone, and in seeking new formats in the process.

Juri de Marco is the founder and artistic director of the genre-free STEGREIF.orchester in Berlin, which plays by heart and without a conductor, reinterpreting, arranging and improvising classical works. Passionate from an early age about changing the stagnant classical music scene, he studied classical horn in Berlin and jazz trumpet in Leipzig in his own unique way. Freelance, he works as a composer and presenter. Today, at the age of 28, he asks himself how music can sensitize the world for sustainability, inclusion and inner development.