Artists 2010 – Schumann's love. A cycle of poets and songs

Vanessa Barkowski

Vanessa Barkowski is a freelance singer living in Berlin. She studied in Detmold, Hamburg and Berlin, including with Gerhild Romberger and Uta Trekel-Burckhardt. Master classes with Kurt Moll, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Ingeborg Danz completed her training. The mezzo-soprano is a regular guest singer at the Komische Oper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera and the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Barkowski was awarded the Youth Promotion Prize of the City of Berlin in 2005. The young singer has also made a name for herself in the interpretation of “Lieder” in the area of New Music.

Axel Bauni

Axel Bauni has been a Professor of the Contemporary “Lied” at the Berlin University of the Arts since 2007. The well-known pianist studied at the Mannheim/Heidelberg University of Music as well as with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann at the Berlin University of the Arts. He is the interpreter and initiator of numerous first performances of “Lieder” by Hans Werner Henze, Matthias Pintscher and Wolfgang Rihm, among others. Together with Reimann, he is both the publisher of and pianist for the series of CDs of contemporary “Lied” on the ORFEO label. He works as the accompanist for singers of “Lieder” such as Christine Schäfer, Dietrich Henschel and Thomas Quasthoff.

Caroline Melzer

Caroline Melzer has been a permanent member of the Komische Oper Berlin ensemble since 2007 and regularly sings the major roles, most recently those of Countess Almaviva in “The Marriage of Figaro” and Giulietta in “The Tales of Hoffman”. Her wider activities as a concert singer include performances at festivals such as the UltraSchall Festival Berlin or the Rheingau Musik Festival. In addition to opera, this multi-faceted singer is also interested in singing “Lieder” and interpreting New Music.

Sabine Scho

Sabine Scho studied German and Philosophy in Münster, Germany. She currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil, and in Berlin, Germany. Her first collection of poetry entitled “Thomas Kling entdeckt Sabine Scho” (EN: Thomas Kling discovers Sabine Scho) was published in 2001. It was reissued by kookbooks as “Album” in 2008. The collection entitled “farben” (EN: colours) followed in the autumn of 2008. In her work, she coolly dissects images and values in order to present them from a different angle. “A poetic historian of mentality whose brittle and eccentric writing is unique in this day and age.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Thomas Kling once said that he knew of no one more successful in the “(resentment- and didactics-free, i.e. poetic) description of the battle of the sexes (here the term is valid) in its most wretched form as the 1970s-born Sabine Scho.” Among other accolades, Scho has won the Leonce and Lena Prize (2001) and the promotion prize of the Ernst Meister Prize (2001).
Sabine Scho at ZVAB

Ulf Stolterfoht

Ulf Stolterfoht (born in Stuttgart in 1963) became known for his fachsprachen (‘lingos’) series of books of poems, published by Urs Engeler). He has also translated Getrude Stein, conversed with Peter Dittmer‘s AMME (‘Nursie’) about poetry matters (Ammengespräche,  roughbooks 2011) and founded the virtual empire BRUETERICH, the poetry service for experimental poetry.
Through its imitative strategies, his poetry draws attention to the disconnect between world and language. His poems reveal a fascination with poetic method, language itself being in particular analysed as a means of creation. What is the carrying range of language, how clearly can it communicate, and at what point does it start to deceive?
From 2008 to 2009 he was a guest professor at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. Prizes he has been awarded include the 2005 Anna Seghers Prize and the 2008 Peter Huchel Prize. In 2009 he and Barbara Köhler shared the Erlangen Literature Prize for Poetry in Translation.
Publications (selection):
Fachsprachen I-IX.  poems, Urs Engeler 1998.
holzrauch über heslach. poems, Urs Engeler 2007.
Ammengespräche. poems, roughbooks 2010.
handapparat heslach: Quellen und Materialien, roughbooks 2011
Aufkommender Atem, Suhrkamp-Verlag 2011

Jan Müller-Wieland

Jan Müller-Wieland has been Professor of Composition at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Munich since 2007. Soon after completing his studies (including with Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen), Müller-Wieland had already received reputable commissions for operas, symphonies and chamber music, including from the state operas of both Hamburg and Berlin and from orchestras such as the Munich Philharmonic and the London Sinfonietta. Müller-Wieland won the Paul Hindemith Prize in 1993 for his music, which is based on the ideal of “word-creating composition” (Peter Ruzicka). He has been a member of the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg since 2003.