Heiner Goebbels

Heiner Goebbels, born in 1952, has lived in Frankfurt am Main since 1972. After completing studies in sociology and music, he composed music theater pieces, scenic concerts, audio pieces and compositions for ensemble and large orchestra (Surrogate Cities and others).As a composer he has worked with the most important ensembles and orchestras (Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Berliner Philharmoniker) and conductors (Lothar Zagrosek, Sir Simon Rattle, Peter Rundel, Peter Eötvös and many others).Since the beginning of the 1990s he has composed and directed his own and worldwide acclaimed music theater pieces, e.g. “Schwarz auf Weiß” (1996), “Max Black” (1998), “Eislermaterial” (1998), “Hashirigaki” (2000), “Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten” (2002), “Eraritjaritjaka” (2004), “Stifters Dinge” (2007), “Songs of Wars I have seen” (2007), “I went to the house but did not enter” (2008) and many more. Most of these music theater pieces have been produced by the Theatre Vidy in Lausanne and have been invited to the most important international theater and music festivals in Europe, the USA, South America, Australia and Asia. For the Ruhrtriennale 2012 he developed his music theater piece When the mountain changed its clothing and staged John Cage's Europeras 1&2 as opening premiere.Numerous CD releases on ecm-records, for which he received two Grammy nominations, essays, lectures. Heiner Goebbels has been awarded numerous international records, radio play, theater and music prizes. In September 2012 he received the International Ibsen Award, one of the most important theater prizes worldwide. He was Composer in Residence at the Lucerne Festival, with the Bochumer Symphoniker and is a member of several Academies of Arts as well as Honorable Fellow at Dartington College of Arts and at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London; Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2007/08), Artist in Residence at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA 2010. Heiner Goebbels is Professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies at the Justus Liebig University Giessen and since 2006 President of the Hessian Theater Academy. From 2012 to 2014 he was the artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale Festival der Künste.
In 2020 he composed the orchestra cycle A House of Call, which had its world premiere due to the Corona pandemic only in 2021 at Berlin Philharmony, Cologne Philharmony, Hamburg Elbphilharmony and others in Septemer 2021. He also composed a new radiowork "Gegenwärtig lebe ich allein" with words by Henri Michaux and a music theatre piece called Liberté d'action in 2021.
As guest professor of Goethe University Frankfurt in 2023 he led a stage project for students referring to Bertolt Brecht's 'Lehrstücke' at Frankfurt LAB.