Volker Staub

Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1961; Volker Staub is a German composer and instrument maker. From 1981 to 1985 he studied at the Akademie für Tonkunst in Darmstadt with piano as his main subject, from 1984 composition with Johannes Fritsch, and from 1985 to 1990 composition at the Cologne Musikhochschule; in 1984, 1986 and 1988 he attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses. Since 1981 he has developed and built percussion instruments of wood, skin, metal, glass and stone as well as string and electroacoustic instruments. In 1988 he received a prize at the WDR’s international composition competition Forum junger Komponisten, in 1989 the promotion prize of the city of Cologne and a scholarship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes; in 1990 he travelled to the USA with the International Visitor Program of the US Information Agency, in 1991 he received a scholarship from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and in 1996 he was a fellow of the Villa Massimo. On the Cybele album Feedback Studio Köln Sampler – 25 Years of Feedback Studio Köln Studio (1996) he is represented with an excerpt from the “Trio” (1993) for steel string, tree trunk and motor sirens, which he played with Johannes Fritsch at the opening of the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne on 14 January 1993; he developed and built all the instruments himself.