Helmut Zapf

Born in Rauschengesees in Thuringia on 4 March 1956; Helmut Zapf is a composer. He had piano and organ lessons at an early age; from 1974 to 1979 he studied church music at the Kirchenmusikschule Eisenach and the Evangelische Hochschule für Kirchenmusik Halle and attended the summer courses for new music in Gera. From 1979 to 1982 he was cantor at the town church in Eisenberg, then until 1986 a master student in composition with Georg Katzer at the Akademie der Künste der DDR in Berlin; since then he has lived as a freelance composer in Zepernick near Berlin. Working stays took him to the Swiss Centre for Computer Music and the Experimentalstudio of the Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung in Freiburg. His honours include the Hanns Eisler Prize in 1986, the Hans Stieber Prize in 1989, a diploma of the Kranichstein Music Prize in 1990 and the promotion prize of the Akademie der Künste Berlin-Brandenburg in 1993; in 1995 he was guest of honour at the Villa Massimo in Rome, and since 2015 he has been a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. Instrumental works such as “Dreiklang III” for large orchestra (Donaueschingen 1992) stand on an equal footing with electroacoustic ones such as the “Canzone” for bass drum and live electronics (1994). In the Cybele catalogue he appears on DEGEM Vol. 3 – LeiseLaute (1997) with “Canto del Aria” (1996) for oboe and tape and on DEGEM Vol. 8 – 90 Seconds of Reality (2005) with “parish music” (2003).