Lecturers Academy for contemporary Music

Asia Ahmetjanova, correpetition, performance
For Ahmetjanova, the individuality of each person and their personal approach to music is very important. She rejects any form of generalisation of people and their activities, this way of thinking is also reflected in her compositions. 

The experimental way of dealing with the musical material and the human body, her own personal spirituality in her compositions as well as works of classical piano literature are in balance in her artistic as well as compositional life. 

Asia works as a composer and pianist, is a member of the Ensemble ö! (Switzerland) and accompanist at the Lucerne School of Music and the Bern University of the Arts. Ahmetjanova also gives lectures on her compositions and art performance.

ahmetjanova.com

Marco Blaauw, trumpet
Why the trumpet? «I’ve always had in mind the image of a troubadour, spreading the news through music. I wanted to do that too - with my trumpet. An important focus of my work has been to further develop the instrument and its playing technique, and to initiate new repertoire.»
Marco Blaauw has an international career as a soloist, and is a member of Ensemble Musikfabrik in Cologne, Germany. Blaauw works in close collaboration with both the established and younger composers of our time. Many works have been especially written for Blaauw, including compositions by Peter Eötvös, Georg Friedrich Haas, Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders and John Zorn. Blaauw worked intensely with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Flying over the orchestra in a gimbaled cage, he played the leading role in Stockhausen’s MICHAELs REISE. He presented the premier of HARMONIES for trumpet for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and has premiered many solo roles from the opera cycle LICHT.
In 2015, he started working with La Monte Young and the Theatre of Eternal Music Brass Ensemble on the melodic version of «The Second Dream of the High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer.» In the coming years, he will produce many concerts throughout Europe to continue performing the version for 8 trumpets. Marco Blaauw's work is widely documented through radio, television and CD recordings. He started a series of solo CD’s in 2005, the sixth of which, Angels, was awarded the «Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2014.»
Blaauw has been intensely active as a teacher, starting with the Stockhausen Courses, International Darmstadt Summer Courses and Brass Academy, Luzern University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale, international master classes and most recently the Stockhausen master’s program at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
As a composer, Blaauw was awarded the 2016 Karl Sczuka Prize (support grant) for his first radio play, «deathangel.»

Emilio Guim, computer and technology
Emilio Guim studied jazz fusion at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, USA and sound engineering at the Los Angeles Recording School. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Jazz Performance and Composition at York University in Toronto, Canada. In Lucerne, he completed the Master Music and Art Performance at the Lucerne School of Music.
Emilio's main instrument is the electric guitar. Besides composition and performance, he is interested in MaxMSP programming, sound design, free improvisation and music for dance theatre. He has presented his own pieces as well as those of other composers at various festivals, such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, KlangBasel Festival, PAM! Festival Uster, Alpentöne International Festival, Freiburg International Dance Festival, 416 Creative Music Festival Toronto, and Ecuador International Jazz Festival. During his career to date, Emilio has released numerous rock, jazz and avant-garde albums. He has written music for film and television, toured with his various ensembles such as Ensemble of Nomads (contemporary music), Lila Ensemble (improvised music and dance), Lullaby North (jazz fusion), and taught for five years at the Elite Academy of Music in Toronto, Canada.

Talvi Hunt, piano
Talvi Hunt is an Estonian pianist specialised in contemporary music. Talvi is active as a soloist, chamber music musician and orchestra player, which has brought her to collaborate
with different collectives such as Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Ö, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. She has performed in many festivals, including Lucerne Festival, Festival ECLAT (Stuttgart), Klang Basel, Festival ZeitRäume (Basel), Taktlos Festival (Zürich), reMusik (St.Petersburg), Festival AFEKT (Tallinn), ISCM World New Music Days (Tallinn) etc. Since 2015 she is working with Ensemble of Nomads, which is based in Switzerland and is concentrated on multimedia concerts. Currently she is also part of Estonian National Opera Orchestra and Ensemble for New Music Tallinn.
In 2017 Talvi obtained a Master degree in contemporary music interpretation with Prof. Florian Hoelscher at Hochschule Luzern – Musik (Switzerland). Bachelor degree in music performance received Talvi from Estonian Academy of Music and Theater with Age Juurikas. She is also interested in interdisciplinary art projects and improvisation, in which she complemented her skills in Danish National School of Performing Arts in 2012, where she created numerous performances in collaboration with dancers and actors. Talvi has participated in many masterclasses, as well contemporary music courses such as Donaueschinger Musiktage (DE), Darmstadt, 48th Internationalen Ferienkursen für Neue Musik (DE), IMPULS Academy (AT).

Garth Knox, viola
Garth Knox was born in Ireland and spent his childhood in Scotland. He studied with Frederic Riddle at the Royal College of Music in London where he won several prizes for viola and for chamber music. Thereafter he played with most of the leading groups in London in a mixture of all repertoires, from baroque to contemporary music. 
In 1983 he was invited by Pierre Boulez to become a member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, which involved regular solo playing, including concertos directed by Pierre Boulez, and chamber music, touring widely and playing in international festivals.
In 1990 Garth Knox joined the Arditti String Quartet, which led him to play in all the major concert halls of the world, working closely with and giving first performances of pieces by most of today's leading composers including Ligeti, Kurtag, Berio, Xenakis, Lachenmann, Cage, Feldman and Stockhausen (the famous «Helicopter Quartet»).
In 1998, Garth Knox left the quartet to concentrate on his solo career. As a soloist, he has given premieres by Henze (the Viola Sonata is dedicated to him), Ligeti, Schnittke, Ferneyhough, James Dillon, George Benjamin and many others. He also collaborates regularly in theatre and dance projects, and has written and performed a one-man show for children.
He has recently become a pioneer of the viola d’amore, exploring its possibilities in new music, with and without electronics, and is in the process of creating a new repertoire for this instrument.
Garth Knox now lives in Paris, where he enjoys a full time solo career, giving recitals, concertos and chamber music concerts all over Europe, the USA and Japan. He is also an active composer, and his «Viola Spaces », the first phase of an on-going series of concert studies for strings (published in 2010 by Schott) combines ground-breaking innovation in string technique with joyous pleasure in the act of music making. The pieces have been adopted and performed by young string players all over the world.
Garth Knox is International Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Eric Lamb, flute
Flutist Eric Lamb is in demand internationally as a concerto soloist, recording artist, recitalist, concert curator and chamber musician.
Since leaving his post as a core member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Eric performs regularly as guest with a long list of the world's most important orchestras and soloist ensembles including the Boulez Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Geneva Camerata, Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Omega Ensemble (Sydney), the Cleveland Orchestra, PHACE, Camerata Bern, the City of Birmingham Orchestra, ASKO Schoenberg Ensemble and the Radio Orchestra Frankfurt. He has been invited to perform at festivals in Melbourne, Darmstadt, Graz, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Acht Brücken in Cologne, Mostly Mozart Festival, Heidelberg Spring Music Festival, and the Bucharest Festival for New Music, to name but a few.
In the last decade, Eric has premiered more than 200 works and has worked closely with composers Viera Janarcekova, Michael Jarrell, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, George Lewis, Ivan Buffa, Julia Purgina, Marc-Andres Dalbavie, HK Gruber, Matthias Pintscher, Reinbert de Leeuw, Michel van der Aa, Nico Muhly, Ben Foskett and conductors Sakari Oramo, Francois Xavier Roth, Franz Welser-Möst, Ludovic Morlot, Pablo Heras-Casado, Steve Schick, Susanna Mälkki.
Lamb continues to be a much sought-after teacher and is regularly invited to present workshops, master classes and lectures throughout South America, Europe and the US. He has been artist in residence at the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique et Danse La Rochelle and the Escola de Musica in Sao Paulo. Most recently, he has given master classes at the Hochschule for Musik Hannover, Birmingham Conservartoire, Royal Northern College, Vanderbilt University, Geneva Conservatory, Slovak Academy of Music in Bratislava and the Ljubljana Conservatory of Music and Dance.
Presently, Eric Lamb teaches flute, improvisation and is Chair of woodwind, brass and percussion performance at the Fredrich Gulda School of Music in Vienna Austria.

Bernhard Lang, composition
Born on 24th of February 1957 in Linz, Austria, Lang finished highschool and piano studies at the Bruckner Konservatorium and moved to Graz to study jazz piano, arranging and classical piano. There he also studied philosophy and German philology.

Between 1977 and 1981 he worked with various jazz bands, the most important of which was the «Erich Zann Septett».
After having finished his piano studies he began studying composition with Polish composer Andrej Dobrowolsky, who introduced him to the techniques of new music. He also studied with Hermann Markus Pressl who taught him counterpoint and introduced him to the work of Josef Matthias Hauer.
Since 1988 he has been teaching music theory, harmony and counterpoint at the University of Music and dramatic Arts in Graz, and since 2003, has hold a professorship in composition there.
In Graz, he also met Gösta Neuwirth who was to become one of his main influences, and who instructed him in composition for many years outside of the university setting.
Georg Friedrich Haas introduced him to microtonal music and in 1988, commissioned a quartertone piece for the Musikprotokoll festival.

Since then his pieces have been performed at the Steirische Herbst Festival, at the Moscow Alternativa Festival and the Moscow Modern Festival, Biennale Hannover, Tage Absoluter Musik Allentsteig I and II, Klangarten I and IV, Resistance Fluctuation Los Angeles, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Salzburger Festspiele, Wien Modern, Donaueschingen, Witten and many others.

In 1998 he was a guest lecturer in Peter Weibels Media class in Vienna. In 2006 he was featured artist of the Wien Modern Festival in Vienna. At the Institute for Electronic Music Graz he developed the Loop-Generator and the Visual Loop Generator with Winfried Ritsch and Thomas Musil. He has various sound installations in his list of works, among them «Schwarze Bänder» Musica Viva 2005.

Since 2003 there have been a number of collaborations with various choreographers: Xavier Le Roy, Christine Gaigg and Willi Dorner. His main interest since 1999 is music theater, derived from his interpretation of the ideas of difference/repetition: «Theater of Repetitions» 2003, «I hate Mozart» 2006, «The Old Man from the Mountain» 2007.

He also performs live as an improviser both solo and in duos. He currently lives in Vienna.

bernhardlang.at

Angelika Luz, vocal
After her training at the HMDK Stuttgart, Angelika Luz was engaged as a coloratura soprano at various stages in Europe. As a soloist she has worked with orchestras and chamber music ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, ensemble recherche or Klangforum Wien. Numerous radio and CD recordings and appearances at all the major international festivals document the singer's turn to contemporary music, where, in addition to solo appearances and solo performances, she was also associated with the Neue Vocalsolisten in musical and experimental work until 2006 and has sung countless world premieres in close collaboration with composers. She is a co-founder of the Neue Vocalsolisten and was a member from 2000 to 2007. 

From 2007 to 2022 she was Professor of New Music/Voice at the HMDK Stuttgart and held the position of Director of the Studio for Vocal Art and New Music Theatre. 
She also shares her knowledge and experience internationally in master classes and workshops on contemporary music, vocal arts, improvisation and acting.

As a dramaturge and director, Angelika Luz has created over 50 mostly interdisciplinary productions that combine music, voice, scene, light, language, multimedia, dance, scents or puppetry. 

Recently she has increasingly been working as a vocal performer, improvising with her vocal art in dialogue with artistic objects, architecturally designed buildings or natural formations.
natural formations. Since 2022, she has directed the Sprechensemble of the Akademie für gesprochenes Wort, Stuttgart.

www.angelika-luz.de

Melise Mellinger, violine
Melise Mellinger studied violin at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg with Professor Wolfgang Marschner from 1978 to 1983 and at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam with Professor Herman Krebbers from 1984 to 1986. From 1987 to 1991 she was a member of the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra. Since 1991 she has worked exclusively as a violinist in ensemble recherche, which she co-founded in 1984. With some 600 premieres since its founding in 1985, the ensemble has played a decisive role in shaping the development of contemporary chamber and ensemble music. She is involved in the recording of more than 50 CDs with music of the 20th and 21st centuries, which have received several international awards, including the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics and the Diapason d`Or.
From 2000 to 2010 she gave courses at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main and at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. Since 2004 she has been teaching at the Ensemble Academy Freiburg. She has also given instrumental lessons and seminars on the practice of New Music, such as at Harvard University, Cambridge, Northwestern University Chicago and at the conservatories in Lviv, Kiev, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen as well as in Mexico and South America. Melise Mellinger has been a lecturer for New Music High Strings (violin/viola) at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart since the summer semester 2018.

Lucas Niggli, drums, improvisation
Lucas Niggli (1968) makes music as a drummer and percussionist in the border area between improvised and composed music.
His formations include STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND, Biondini - Godard - Niggli, KALO YELE (with Aly Keïta), Beat Bag Bohemia, the duo with singer Andreas Schaerer and A Novel Of Anomaly.
His concert tours have taken him all over the world and to many renowned festivals. He collaborates with musical personalities such as Marino Pliakas and Dominik Blum, Nils Wogram, Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, Fred Frith, John Cale, Pierre Favre, Elliott Sharp, Michael Wertmüller, Erika Stucky, Wu Wei, Flea, Xu Fengxia, Tim Berne, Felix Profos, Paul Plimley, Melvin Gibbs, Fritz Hauser, Peter Conradin Zumthor, Aly Keïta and many others.
Niggli's discography includes 60 titles, 20 of which are CDs as a leader and composer. He is also active as an organiser of concerts and festivals and as a lecturer at the Zurich University of Music (ZHdK).

Martina Schucan, Violoncello
The new, the living is at the centre of Martina Schucan's understanding of music. At the age of 14, Martina Schucan was accepted into the master class of André Navarra in Detmold (D). After her concert exam, she continued her studies with Heinrich Schiff, Daniel Shafran and Janos Starker. A first prize at the "Gaspar Cassadò" competition in Florence and numerous other awards opened up an international concert career for her.

As a soloist she performs with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Orchestra Tokyo, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and plays at the international festivals of Salzburg, Lucerne, Witten, Schwetzingen, Montpellier, Bratislava and Beijing. As a chamber musician, she takes part in the chamber music festivals of Kuhmo, Prussia Cove and Davos and counts musicians such as Yuri Bashmet, Heinz Holliger, György Kurtág, Raphael Oleg, Veronika Hagen, Shlomo Mintz and the Carmina Quartet among her partners. The exploration of contemporary music is a central part of her artistic commitment. Her interpretations of Henri Dutilleux's concerto, Michael Jarrell's «Assonance V» and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's solo sonata have been acclaimed by experts and audiences alike.

Martina Schucan is a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts and a member of the Collegium Novum Zurich. 

Katharina Rosenberger, composition
Katharina Rosenberger, born in Zurich, is a composer and professor of composition at the Musikhochschule Lübeck (DE). Together with Julie Beauvais and Lisa Nolte, she took over the artistic direction of SONIC MATTER, a new festival for contemporary and experimental music in Zurich, in 2020. 

Much of her work is interdisciplinary and deals with the way music, or rather sound, is produced, performed and perceived. Her projects often develop collaboratively and are linked to the visual arts, video and theatre. Rosenberger's compositions, music theatre and installation works have been and can be heard at Acht Brücken, Cologne, Warschauer Herbst, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Heroines of Sound, Berlin, ZeitRäume Basel, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Festival La Bâtie, Geneva, Felclja Blumental Festival, Tel Aviv, Festival Visiones Sonoras, Morelia, Mexico, reMusik, St. Petersburg, Shanghai New Music Days and Shanghai International Electro-Acoustic Music Week, October Contemporary, Hong Kong as well as at various concerts mainly in Switzerland, France, Germany and the USA. 

In 2019, Rosenberger was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, New York. Her installation art VIVA VOCE (2013) and Room V (2007) were awarded the «Mediaprojects Award»/Sitemapping by the Federal Office of Culture, Bern. Her portrait CD TEXTUREN (Hat Hut Records) was awarded the prestigious Aaron Copeland Recording Grant, New York as well as the «Bestenliste 4_2012/Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik» (German Record Critics’ Award). 

rosenberger.ch
soundcloud.com/chrrroseberger