Donaueschinger Musiktage 2015

The Donaueschinger Musiktage is the oldest and most traditional festival for New Music in the world. Established in 1921 under princely protection, still today it stands for all new experimental forms of contemporary music and sound art. Music history was and is written in Donaueschingen. After the death of long-standing festival director Armin Köhler this year sees Björn Gottstein take on artistic direction of the Donaueschinger Musiktage.
Since 2013 Björn Gottstein has been New Music Editor at German broadcaster SWR2, responsible since then for the “attacca” concert series. He is also one of the Artistic Directors of the Stuttgart ECLAT Festival. Born in Aachen the 46 year old musicologist initially worked as a freelance journalist and since 2009 also as an organizer. In this role he focalized such issues as music and poverty (Audio Poverty, 2009), music and transcendence (Lux Aeterna, 2011) and musical interpretation (Faithful, 2012). As a journalist and curator he was also always interested in peripheral aspects of New Music and cross-genre experimentation. Gottstein was a critic in the daily newspaper “taz” and also wrote for many of the key national and international music magazines. As a freelance writer he also worked for all major broadcasters in Germany’s public broadcasting consortium ARD, for Deutschlandfunk and Deutschlandradio. 2006 saw the publication of his book “Musik als Ars Scientia” (from Pfau-Verlag). He taught at Berlin University of Technology, at the Darmstadt Summer School, at Basel Academy of Music and at the Berlin University of the Arts. He sat on numerous juries including the ZKM’s Giga-Hertz Prize and the composition prize of the regional capital of Stuttgart. Furthermore, Gottstein is committed to cultural policy issues and as the Chairman of the “Initiative Neue Musik” from 2009 to 2013 he guided the fortunes of the free music scene in Berlin.
The next Donaueschinger Musiktage will be held from 16 to 18 October 2015. Amongst others, composition commissions have been issued to Mark Andre, Richard Ayres, Mark Barden, Michael Beil, Johannes Boris Borowski, Ives Chauris, Alvin Curran, Francesco Filidei, Orm Finnendahl, Patrick Frank, Georg Friedrich Haas, Johannes Kreidler, Olga Neuwirth, Yoav Passovsky, Luis Antunes Pena, Enno Poppe, Stefan Prins and Carlos Sandoval. In addition to the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart and the SWR Experimental Studio the festival will also be host to ensemble intercontemporain.

 

October, 16 to 18, 2015
Donaueschingen, Germany

Further Information:
www.swr.de/donaueschingen