About my work

Much of my work manifests in an interdisciplinary context and is bound to confront traditional performance practice in terms of how sound is produced, heard and seen. Taking the audience to peculiar places, ambiguous and deceiving, where the usual expectations have to be thrown over board. Often the instrumentalists are challenged to go beyond an "only" interpretative function, their corporal presence on stage is fully taken into account.

Regardless the medium, if composed for the stage or an installation, I'd like to invite the listener to engage with the subject matter, to confront and distinct and to physically experience the sculpturesque nature of sound.

 

Portrait of Katharina Rosenberger
Photo: Hans Gut
Biography

Katharina Rosenberger, born in Zurich, is Professor of Composition and has taught composition and sound art at the University of California San Diego for 12 years. Starting April 2021 she will hold the professorship for composition at the University of Music Lübeck.

Her compositions, installations and interdisciplinary stage work have been featured at festivals such as the Warschauer Herbst, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Heroines of Sound, Berlin, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Hannover, Weimarer Frühlingstage, DE, ZeitRäume Basel, Musikfestival Bern, Tage für Neue Musik, Zürich, Festival Archipel, Geneva, CH, Festival Les Musiques, Marseille, FR, Festival Bernaola, Vitoria-Gasteiz, ES, Felicja Blumental Festival, Tel Aviv, IL, Festival reMusik, St. Petersburg, RU, Festival Visiones Sonoras, Morelia, MX, Shanghai Electronic Music Week, Shanghai New Music Days, CN, October Contemporary, Hongkong, HK, as well as in many concert series throughout Europe and the United States.

Rosenberger is a recipient of the 2023 Swiss Music Prize and 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. In the past, she has been awarded with the Hellman Fellowship, San Francisco, the Sony Scholar Award, and the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Commission for her composition Gesang an das noch namenlose Land. Her installation work VIVA VOCE and Room V won the “Mediaprojects Award” /  Sitemapping of the Swiss Federal Agency (OFC), Berne. Her portrait CD TEXTUREN with the Wet Ink Ensemble, released on HatHut Records, has been awarded the prestigious Copland Recording Grant and was selected for the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Bestenliste 4_2012.

Her music can be heard on Mode Records, Hat Hut Records, Unit Records and Akenaton.