Photo: © Hartmut Bühler

Portrait

Gerhard Stäbler, born in 1949 in Wilhelmsdorf near Ravensburg in southern Germany, is one of the most prominent composers of his generation. He studied composition (with Nicolaus A. Huber) and organ (with Gerd Zacher) in Detmold and Essen and has since lived as a freelance composer in the Ruhr area, and from 2011 in the Rhineland. His extensive oeuvre includes compositions for music and dance theatre, for large symphony orchestras and ensembles, vocal music of all genres, chamber music, solo instrumental works, electronic music and performances.

Stäbler’s music often goes beyond the usual framework by incorporating elements into his compositions that break with conventional performance situations: be it through gestures or movements in space, light and scent design, working with everyday props or actively involving the audience. His aim is always to stimulate the mind and sensitise the ears and other senses to new, unexpected patterns of perception and thought. This is also the source of Stäbler’s preference for the intertwining of carefully crafted composition and responsible design by the performers – who, for example, can be entrusted with the choice of tonal material, sound generators or mutual (re)actions within a pre-formed event framework.

As a composer and teacher, he has been establishing worldwide relationships with important institutions and ensembles in many countries in Europe, America and Asia since the 1980s. In addition to his artistic activities, he has also been involved in politics and as a curator and organiser of interdisciplinary projects. He was one of the first to explore the use of industrial spaces for contemporary art. He initiated the founding of the Gesellschaft für Neue Musik Ruhr (GNMR) and, together with composers Johannes Kalitzke, Nicolaus A. Huber and pianist Bernhard Wambach, the MusikFabrik NRW. He conceived the AKTIVE MUSIK festivals and was artistic director of the World Music Days of the International Society for Contemporary Music in the Ruhr region in 1995. He repeatedly devotes himself to large-scale musical projects in public spaces – such as during the RuhrWorks in New York in 1989, las jornadas de arte contemporanea in Porto (Portugal) in 1993, in 1997 and 1999 as part of the Internationale Bauausstellung IBA in the Ruhr area, in 2008 in the Duisburg Landscape Park, and in 2010 on behalf of the Goethe Institute in Ukraine with the project STEINE in the centre of Kiev. Stäbler addressed the topic of refugee policy in the dance theatre piece … auf dem Weg. Eine Entdeckungsreise (… on the way. A journey of discovery), which was awarded the 2015 Children’s and Youth Culture Project Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia, as well as in the 2016 project THE RAFT – DAS FLOSS (THE RAFT), based on the novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance) by Peter Weiss.

Compositions

A continuous series of composition commissions (including Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Musica Viva of Bayerischer Rundfunk, Festival Mouvement of Saarländischer Rundfunk and Kunststiftung NRW) and repeated invitations as composer-in-residence (e.g. Three Two New York, Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf-Duisburg, Sonic Fusion Festival Edinburgh, Borealis Festival Norway, Dias de musica electroacustica Portugal, Istanbul artist residency GALATA of the Kunststiftung NRW) document Gerhard Stäbler’s influence and significance in the contemporary music scene. Important world premieres and first performances in recent years have taken place in Bergen, Norway (Borealis Festival and Bergen International Festival), Bremen (The Drift, dance theatre), Wroclaw (IGNM World Music Days), Dresden, Düsseldorf (Tonhalle), Tokyo (Music Documents 13), Karlsruhe (Festival ZeitGenuss, ZKM Festival Piano plus), Frankfurt (hr-Sinfonieorchester), Kiev, Mülheim an der Ruhr (Festival Utopie jetzt!), Ulm (including the music theatre Erlöst Albert E.) as well as at the Norske Opera Oslo (youth opera Simon) and the Mainfranken Theater Würzburg (music theatre Letzte Dinge based on Paul Auster, The Colour based on HP Lovecraft and the concert for orchestra Ausgewilderte Farben). In 2019, there were two world premieres for Stäbler as part of the festival Acht Brücken | Musik für Köln: HÖR·FLECKEN – Uchronische Augenblicke in der U-Bahn-Station Heumarkt Köln and the orchestral version of Den Müllfahrern von San Francisco, commissioned by WDR. To mark the composer's 70th birthday, major portrait concerts were held in Seoul, Busan, Stuttgart, Cologne and Duisburg. For this occasion, the ensemble work GAME – Ausschweifendes ... was commissioned by the Tonhalle Düsseldorf and the string quartet - - ] erzählen ... was commissioned by the Kunststiftung NRW. During the 2020/21 pandemic season, Stäbler wrote numerous compositions, including two orchestral/ensemble works for the BTHVN2020 anniversary year and the vocal work all is to be dared for the #HighTech = HighHumanism project at the Dresden University of Music with the vocal ensemble AuditivVokal. In 2022, the ensemble work TAUBES SCHWARZ, commissioned by the Kunststiftung NRW, premiered as part of the Muziek Biennale Niederrhein. There were also broadcasts on RBB, Radio Belgrade, NDR, DLF, SWR and projects in Dresden, Korea and at the Contraste Festival (Lviv, Ukraine). In 2023, the five CELAN-GESÄNGE and the concert-length composition MAGISCHE SPIELE for four pianos premiered in Trier.

The string quartet SICH·VERSCHREIBEN with typewriter and audience, a commission from the Kunststiftung NRW, was premiered in June 2025 by the Minguet Quartet at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Following the successful premiere of PROLOG for ensemble (from: SALZ) in Hallstatt as part of the 2024 Capital of Culture/Salzkammergut, the full-length opera SALZ (based on Peter Handke's story Kali) will premiere in autumn 2026 at the Landestheater Linz (Austria) and will be presented in subsequent performances in Bolzano and Trento (Italy).

Collaboration with Kunsu Shim at EarPort Duisburg

From 2000 to 2010, Gerhard Stäbler and his partner Kunsu Shim established the centre for contemporary music EarPort at the invitation of the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, where the two composers further developed their original concept of performance music and performance concerts, which are characterised by a programmatically precisely composed dramaturgy. In this context, Stäbler also appears regularly as a performer and reciter. In October 2015, EarPort was reopened as a venue for experimental encounters between the arts. Since then, Shim and Stäbler have been deepening their long-standing collaboration with institutions in the Rhine-Ruhr region – in Düsseldorf, for example, with the Kunsthalle, Tonhalle and, above all, the Heinrich Heine Institute, which manages the two composers’ estate as part of the Rheinisches Musikarchiv (Rhenish Music Archive). At the same time, they are developing numerous interdisciplinary concepts for important national and international institutions, such as the projects Trialog with the Korean video artist Kyungwoo Chun (with the publication of the bilingual art music book bild.klang.los), the series of performance concerts at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the International Winter Academies for Performance Music in collaboration with Korean composer Bohyun Kim. In 2016, the extensive programme IM GEGENÜBER was implemented in cooperation with the Diocese of Würzburg. From 2018 to 2020, Stäbler collaborated with musicologist Elisabeth von Leliwa to develop the KlangKunstLabor (Sound Art Laboratory) as an innovative music concept for people with dementia. During the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, they digitally implemented numerous large-scale projects such as TIEFEN·SCHÄRFE as part of the Muziek Biennale Niederrhein and the concert series Quadrophonien in collaboration with composers from Ukraine, Great Britain, the Netherlands and South Korea. Stäbler and Shim collaborate closely with German sound artist Bernd Bleffert (OPENING Festival Trier), English performance artist and composer Alwynne Pritchard (Borealis Festival, Grieg Academy Bergen, etc.), the Ensemble AuditivVokal Dresden under Olaf Katzer - as well as Austrian cellist Katharina Gross, percussionists Arnold Marinissen, Moritz Koch, and Spanish flutist Jaume Dabra Fa, who also regularly perform with the EarPort Ensemble.

International activities

Portrait concerts, performances, guest lectures, and workshops have taken Stäbler and Shim to many countries in Europe, Australia, North and South America, Israel, Japan, and Korea. In 2015 and 2018, with the support of the Goethe Institute, they undertook tours of the USA with residencies at the University of North Texas (Denton) and the Ragdale Foundation, as well as performance concerts and lectures in Chicago (including Chicago University, DePaul and Northwestern University), Minneapolis and Los Angeles. In 2017 and 2022, they worked as visiting professors at the University of the Arts (EUM) in Montevideo, Uruguay. In 2023, they received their second invitation as guest lecturers to the Conservatorium van Amsterdam for a multi-day workshop with a final concert at the ICK Dans Amsterdam dance house.

During their stay as artists-in-residence at the GALATA artist residence of the Kunststiftung NRW in Istanbul in 2022/23, close artistic relationships developed with the ARTER Museum, several Istanbul universities and the renowned HEZARFEN Ensemble. Shim and Stäbler also have an ongoing working relationship with the Grupo de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa ensemble, which led to invitations to the Festival de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa and the VI. International Composition Competition GMCL/Jorge Peixinho, guest performances in Portugal and, as part of an artistic exchange, further concerts in Weimar, the Azores and Duisburg (with a DVD recording sponsored by MKW and the Kunststiftung NRW).

Highlights in 2025 include workshops and performance concerts in Istanbul (ARTER Museum, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and Austrian Cultural Forum), participation in the exhibition project IM KINOSAAL at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and a guest performance tour in November with concerts and workshops as the newest part of TRIALOG in Seoul, Korea.

Awards and impact

A long and impressive series of awards (including the Cornelius Cardew Memorial Prize in 1982 and the Duisburg Music Prize in 2003) and scholarships (including from the Japan Foundation, the Djerassi Foundation/California, the State of Lower Saxony and ZKM Karlsruhe) was most recently added to in 2024 with the German Music Authors' Prize in the category "Composition Percussion’.

The list of publications on Stäbler’s work was expanded in 2015 with Paul Attinello’s Gerhard Stäbler. live / the opposite / daring – music, graphic, concept, event. The anthology DAZWISCHEN. Die Zusammenarbeit der Komponisten Kunsu Shim und Gerhard Stäbler (published in 2022 by Elisabeth von Leliwa) contains current scholarly articles on Shim's work as well as a CD with piano and chamber music works by the two composers. In 2022, the CD Piano Music by Gerhard Stäbler | Kunsu Shim was released with pianist Martin Tchiba. In 2023, the joint concert project Musik der (Un)Ruhe/Music of (Dis)Quiet, inspired by the Book of Disquiet by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, was released on DVD.

Current CD releases in the EarPort edition include the two portrait CDs DAY BY DAY and Papier · Wort · Tod · Spur as well as the live recording of the collaborative concept MAGISCHE SPIELE.