Category: Uncategorized

Dahlia Borsche is a musicologist and curator. In 2019 she has taken on the position as Head of Music at the DAAD Artist-In-Residence program. Dahlia Borsche was active as a promoter, DJ, coordination manager, and producer (CTM Festival Berlin, Labor Sonor, et al.). From 2014-2019 she co-curated CTM’s discourse program. As a musicologist, her most recent engagement was at Humboldt-University’s Chair for Trans-Cultural Musicology in the Department of Musicology and Media Studies. Her research interests focus on contemporary and transcultural music processes, thereby expanding traditional discipline boundaries to the fields of sound, urban and cultural studies. 

Brian Current studied music at McGill University and UC Berkeley. His music, lauded and broadcast in over 35 countries, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize for Orchestral Music (USA), the Italian Premio Fedora for Chamber Opera and a Selected Work (under 30) at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Brian Current’s pieces have been programmed by all major symphony orchestras in Canada and by dozens of professional orchestras, ensembles and opera companies world-wide. He is in demand as a guest conductor and regularly leads orchestral programs of contemporary music.

Brandon Farnsworth is a music curator and scholar based in Zurich and Berlin. He completed his MA in Transdisciplinary Studies at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2015, and his BA in Music Performance in 2013. His dissertation in musicology with the title “Curating Festivals for Contemporary Music” will be completed at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden in 2019. 

Letizia Carigiet holds a Master degree in German Literature (focus on Medieval German Literature and Digital Humanities), gained a diverse range of experience in organisations working on gender equality and youth policy, has been working for Helvetiarockt for 1.5 years as project manager of the Female Bandworkshops, which offers young women their first band and stage experience

Evelyn Saylor is a composer and performer living in Berlin, originally from New York City. She writes electronic music for the concert, for the theater, for modern dance, and for film. She finds arresting sounds in unexpected places and explores their materiality and sonic properties in her compositions through close recording and electronic manipulation. Found and created instruments, synthesis, processing, field recordings, and the human voice play a large role in her music. She has performed her work in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper, the Akademie der Künste, HAU2, Dock 11, and other spaces in Berlin, and has received performances in Merkin Hall and Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, in California, and throughout Europe. As a composer, she regularly collaborates with the choreographer Ruben Reniers, as well as with the artist Holly Herndon as a performer. She has received commissions from the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, the Heroines of Sound Festival, the Orfeo Duo and the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City, and was the recipient of the Mellon Elemental Arts Award. She received her BA in composition from Pomona College in southern California and her MA in electronic music composition from the Universität der Künste Berlin. She currently teaches electronic music at the Universität der Künste Berlin, and is co-founder and current active member of FEM*_ MUSIC*_ at UdK Berlin. Evelyn Saylor is also active as a singer, performer, pianist, synth player, and sound technician for live electronics.

Klara Andersson is a sound artist and composer working with questions of identity, hierarchies and power. Through her art she researches unexplored digital materials and human stories like archaeological artifacts from her generation; chat conversations, webcam videos, forgotten websites which contain information about our times. Text, sound and the performative presence are all tools which borderless moves the works between different artforms and contexts where sound is allowed to act more or less musically. 

Valentina Bertolani is a musicologist specialized in experimental and electronic music, collective improvisation, and cultural diplomacy. She is also interested in cultural policy and tensions between transnational and local cultural networks. She is one of the co-editors of the book Live-Electronic Music: Composition, Performance, Study (Routledge 2018). Her work has been published in miscellaneous volumes and in Music Theory Online and presented at numerous international conferences. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary (Canada) where she was the recipient of various awards and scholarships, such as the prestigious Izaak Killam Walton Scholarship. She pursued master and bachelor degrees from the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage at the University of Pavia. She received the Deep Listening® certificate from the Deep Listening Institute created by Pauline Oliveros. She taught undergraduate courses and seminars at the University of Calgary (Canada) and University of Birmingham (UK).

Theresa Beyer has studied ethnomusicology in Bern and works as a journalist and editor with Swiss Public Radio SRF 2 Kultur. She covers topics such as contemporary music, digital culture, gender and electronic music between pop and avant-garde for one-hour programmes (a.o. „Kontext“, „Musik unserer Zeit“) and for shorter daily formats. Since 2011, Theresa Beyer is core team member of the international music research network Norient.com, where she works as editor and curator, publishes books about underground music worldwide, co-curates exhibitions and concerts and is involved with the Norient Music Film Festival. In 2016, she received the Reinhard-Schulz-Prize for Contemporary Music Journalism, awarded by the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD).

Susanne van Els (1963) is one of the leading musicians of her generation. She performed as a soloist and a chamber musician, and she ran a most entrepreneurial life in music; combining her own ensembles and projects, like a series of artistically fresh solo CDs, with traveling the world with the Schönberg Ensemble, doing advisory and policy development work whilst undertaking adventurous collaborations with the other arts. Significant composers like Louis Andriessen wrote new viola works for Susanne. Her recording of Ligeti’s viola sonata for Harmonia Mundi won both the Diapason d’Or de l’Année and the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis in 2009.

After this truly satisfying international career, she started to work in higher education. She was the head of classical music department of the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. She was responsible for the interdisciplinary projects and joint curriculum at ZUYD Faculty of the Arts. For these institutions, she developed relations with international higher education partners, a.o. in China. She led the European Opera Academy and is currently working in a Strategic Partnership project for new opera making and training. She is a member of the board for innovative initiatives in the arts and she does policy advise coaching and accreditation work.

Susanne is a member of the Learning & Teaching working group of the Strengthening Music in Society project of the Association Européenne Conservatoires. She performed forward-thinking work on assessment and curriculum development in higher music education – recently she presented a keynote speech at the Centre of Excellence in Music Performance Education: ‘How (not) to teach’.

Stellan Veloce is a sardinian composer, performer and cellist living and working in Berlin. They compose pieces for acoustic instrumental ensembles as well as working  on installations or performance pieces focusing on timbre, repetition and density. Together with Kaj Duncan David, Andreas Dzialocha, Laure M. Hiendl and Neo Hülcker they are co-founder of the collective and online platform Y-E-S.org.

Veloce works or has worked with collaborators from different disciplines like composer Neo Hülcker, dancer/choreographers Sheena McGrandles and Julian Weber, visual artist Kyle Bellucci Johanson among others. Occasionally they work as a touring band member or in the studio in the pop music sphere. Collaborations include Peaches, Dear Reader, Kenichi, Kat Frankie and Raz O´hara among others. They are a member of the band Danso Key. 

After completing a degree in cello performance, Veloce studied composition at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Elena Mendoza, Mauro Lanza and Daniel Ott and at the California Institute of the Arts with Ulrich Krieger.

They performed or their work has been performed at London Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Signal Festival (IT), Neue Musik Festival Rummlingen (CH), Dark Music Days and Cycle Festival (IS), CTM Festival (DE), Sound Acts (GR), Inact Festival (FR), BAM! Festival Berlin (DE) and at HAU Berlin (DE), Münchener Kammerspiele (DE), Ufer Studios Berlin (DE), the Place (UK), Akademie der Kunste Berlin (DE) and elsewhere.