Ultraschall Berlin

Classical repertoire – from Bach to Schoenberg – comes just as naturally to conductor and pianist Michael Wendeberg as his passion for new music. In 2016 he took up the position of “Erster Kapellmeister” at the Halle Opera, where in the current season he is conducting performances of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Verdi’s Requiem as well as Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine and Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos.

Michael Wendeberg has conducted renowned orchestras and ensembles including the Staatskapelle Berlin, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra Ljubljana, Klangforum Wien, Remix Ensemble Porto, Musikfabrik Cologne and the Basel Sinfonietta. He has made guest appearances at the Lucerne Festival, Munich Biennale, Bregenz Festival, Venice Biennale, Eclat Festival Stuttgart and Klangspuren Schwaz, as well as at Wien Modern. He made his debut with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble Modern and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Beethovenfest Bonn as well as the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin at the Acht Brücken Festival Cologne. Since April 2018, after seven years as Music Director, he has been announced as first guest conductor of the Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva.

Michael Wendeberg studied piano with Markus Stange, Bernd Glemser and Benedetto Lupo and conducting in Toshiyuki Kamioka’s masterclass in Saarbrücken. During this time he worked as Toshiyuki Kamioka’s assistant at the Wuppertaler Bühnen. After graduating Michael Wendeberg held positions at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and the Staatsoper Berlin, where he assisted Daniel Barenboim and guest conductors such as Pierre Boulez and Sir Simon Rattle, and was principal conductor at the Lucerne Theater.

His opera repertoire includes Bizet’s Carmen; Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Handel’s Orlando; Mozart’s Zaide Clemenza di Tito and The Magic Flute; Verdi’s La Traviat, Un Ballo in Maschera and Il Trovatore; Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Don Pasquale; Rossini’s La Scala di Seta and La Cenerentola; Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel; Ponchielli’s La Gioconda; Bernstein’s West Side Story; and Puccini’s La Bohéme and Tosca. Michael Wendeberg gained national recognition early on in his career in 2006 with Michael Nyman’s The man who mistook his wife for a hat in Wuppertal, as well as the world premiere of Enno Poppe’s ArbeitNahrungWohnung in a production by Anna Viebrock in 2008 at the Munich Biennale, and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend, staged by the director Thomas Fiedler in Zurich in 2010. In 2016 he led the world premiere of Sidney Corbett’s opera Die Andere at the Magdeburg Theatre. He also returned to the Staatsoper Berlin for the revival of The Magic Flute and a new production of Aribert Reimann’s Gespenstersonate in summer 2017. Last season in Halle he conducted Beethoven’s Fidelio and Verdi’s Aida as well as the premiere of a ballet set to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

As a pianist, Michael Wendeberg has won several national and international piano competitions and performed as a soloist at renowned festivals and with prestigious orchestras under conductors such as Jonathan Nott, Marek Janowski and Daniel Barenboim. From 2000 until 2005 he was a member of the Ensemble intercontemporain and worked intensively with Pierre Boulez. In March 2018 he appeared at the Boulez Saal with the Boulez’s complete works for piano, a feat he first pulled off as part of the late composer’s 90th birthday celebrations at the Staatsoper Berlin in 2015. A CD production of the sonatas is planned for summer 2018.

In the 2018/19 season, Michael Wendeberg will return to the Ensemble Intercontemporain, this time on the conductor’s podium rather than as a pianist. He will also conduct concerts with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in Birmingham and Trier and return to the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Estonian Symphony Orchestra Tallin and the Ensemble Modern. Guest appearances will lead him to the Ultraschall Festival Berlin with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin as well as to Witten with the WDR Symphony Orchestra.

With over 220 premieres to his name, Sebastian Berweck is one of the most soughtafter interpreters of experimental contemporary music.

He has appeared as soloist and with ensembles at almost all major festivals for contemporary music: Ultraschall Berlin, Maerzmusik Berlin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Wien Modern, Steirischer Herbst, Salzburger Festspiele, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Impulse Theater Festival Mülheim, ISCM World New Music Days, pgnm festival Bremen, Inventionen Berlin, piano+ festival ZKM Karlsruhe, Klangwerkstatt Berlin, Klangwerktage Hamburg, Heidelberger Frühling, Nous Sons Festival Barcelona and the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, where he is teaching electroacoustic performance practice since 2014.

He has recorded for the Deutschlandradio Berlin, Deutschlandfunk, Swiss Radio DRS, WFMT Chicago, the Hessian Radio Network, Radio Bremen, and the Southwest German Radio. His recordings can be heard on labels such as Wergo, Mode, durian, World Edition, cri, nochords and naivsuper and as inaugural release of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music label.

Sebastian Berweck has been a regular guest in the United States since 1998. He gave concerts and lectures at Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, SUNY Buffalo, SU San Francisco and other universities. Radio WFMT Chicago highlighted his work in a 2-hour feature.
He is frequently invited to talk about new music notation, understanding contemporary music and interpreting new music.

From 2008 to 2012 – and with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) – he has researched at the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) at the University of Huddersfield. His thesis with the title “It worked yesterday – On (re-) performing electroacoustic music” deals with the challenges a performer may face when playing electroacoustic music and was published in 2013.

Dr. Berweck is a founding member of stock11 and lives in Berlin.

The seven concert and opera soloists, ranging from coloratura soprano via countertenor to black bass, view themselves primarily as researchers and  discoverers. To pave the way for new discoveries, they are involved in constant exchange with both established and young composers to research new sounds, vocal techniques and forms of vocal expression. In the last 20 years, this has resulted in a rich, highly virtuosic and repertoire of vocal chamber  music that is unique in the world. This involves a particular emphasis on current music theatre, which incorporates the resources of electronics, video and concept art more than ever before.

Naturally, interdisciplinary discourses are thus a part of the ensemble’s work. This includes visual art, literature, film and performative formats as much as  connections to traditional music. Against this background, the Neue Vocalsolisten have established the genre of vocal chamber music theatre with works by Georges Aperghis, Carola Bauckholt, Luciano Berio, Luca Francesconi, Lucia Ronchetti, Oscar Strasnoy, Claude Vivier and others.

The group collaborates with leading specialist ensembles and radio orchestras, major international opera houses, the independent theatre scene, electronic  studios, as well as numerous festival organisers and concert series for New Music all over the world. In recent years, the ensemble has attracted   international interest with music theatre productions such as Freizeitspektakel by Hannes Seidl and Daniel Kötter, Aura by José‐Maria Sánchez‐Verdú or the “video concert architecture” Mediterranean Voices by twelve composers and the video artist Daniel Kötter, dealing with twelve artistic identities from  twelve Mediterranean countries. Dieter Schnebel’s music theatre work Utopien, Nikolaus Brass’s Sommertag and Simon Steen‐Andersen’s Buenos Aires  were tailor-­made for the Neue Vocalsolisten and have formed part of the group’s repertoire since their premieres in 2014, as have music theatre productions by Annelies Van Parys (Private View), François Sarhan (La philosophie dans le boudoir), Katharina Rosenberger (tempi agitati) and Christoph Ogiermann (Inner Empire).

2018 sees revivals of Utopien and Buenos Aires, as well as a new production for the Operadagen Rotterdam (Annelies Van Parys, An Archive of Love). And  at the 2018 Munich Biennale, the singers will premiere five works of chamber music theatre by Clara Iannotta, Kaj Duncan David, Frederik Neyrinck, Lam Lai, Wilmer Chan and Saskia Bladt. In 2018, the Neue Vocalsolisten will give premieres of over 30 works. Tours will once again take the singers all over  Europe, and also to New York and Tel Aviv.