Günter Heinz

Born in Zeitz; Günter Heinz is a trombonist, improviser and composer. He studied mathematics in Halle and music in Dresden and Berlin and first worked as a mathematician at the Bergakademie Freiberg, the Academy of Sciences in Berlin and the Technische Universität Chemnitz; he took his doctorate in 1983. Since 1987 he has been a freelance musician, giving premieres of contemporary compositions and concerts of improvised music and making radio and CD recordings in Germany and Switzerland; his main instrument is the trombone. In 1992 he held a grant from the Stiftung Kulturfonds and in 1992/93 he was guest composer at the electronic studio of the Musikakademie Basel. He initiated the Festival Frei Improvisierter Musik in Berlin and Dresden and is its artistic director, is a co-founder of the artists’ association Blaue Fabrik in Dresden and has taught in Malta and Sardinia. In the Cybele catalogue he appears on DEGEM Vol. 3 – LeiseLaute (1997) with “Changes” (1996), made in the studio of the Akademie der Künste Berlin for the VORTEX project, in which Berlin composers and video artists documented 24 hours of the city’s sound and image, and on DEGEM Vol. 5 – Imaginary Landscapes (2000) with “keep on the move” (1998) after a spoken text by the Zurich writer Elisabeth Wandeler-Deck.