Herbert A. Mitschke

Born in Aue in Saxony in 1954; Herbert A. Mitschke is a composer, musician and performance artist. From 1976 to 1980 he studied at the Musikhochschule Dresden with saxophone as his main subject; since 1980 he has worked as a composer, musician and performance artist and has written numerous stage scores, including the children’s opera “Vom Igel, der keiner mehr sein sollte” (1986). In 1984 he received the music prize at the National Puppet Theatre Festival of the GDR; from 1983 to 1988 he regularly attended the Gera summer courses for contemporary music, from 1986 to 1988 he studied composition and conducting at the music academies of Dresden and Weimar, and in 1987 he worked in the studio of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. In 1988 he moved to the West, continued his studies at the Musikhochschule Köln and became a member of GIMIK, the Cologne initiative for music and computer science; in 1993 he founded Studio HerMit in Cologne. He often sets poems by Ernst Jandl as music theatre. On the Cybele album Feedback Studio Köln Sampler – 25 Years of Feedback Studio Köln Studio (1996) he is represented with excerpts from “Vaterkomm” (1991), chamber theatre for a singer and player, computer and tape after Jandl’s poem “vater komm”, and “Pendulum” (1996), music theatre for soprano, speaker, tape and interactive pendulum made from the sounds of shattering glass.