Born on 11 January 1944 in Leverkusen; composer. From 1963 to 1970 he studied composition at the Musikhochschule Köln with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Herbert Eimert. In 1971 he worked at the WDR Studio für elektronische Musik at the invitation of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and from the mid-1970s also at IRCAM in Paris; in 1989 his opera “Der Meister und Margarita” was premiered at the Paris Opéra. From 1990 to 1999 he directed the WDR studio; in 1993 he became professor of composition in Berlin, and in 1995, as Hans Werner Henze’s successor, at the Musikhochschule Köln, where he taught until 2009. In 2010 he received the Grawemeyer Award. On the album Bernd Alois Zimmermann and the Late Symphonic Works (2017) he recalls, in conversation with Mirjam Wiesemann, his years of study with Zimmermann (1967–1970), when Zimmermann’s late works were written, and talks about his own music.
York Höller
Composer
