Photo: © Hartmut Bühler

Portrait

Gerhard Stäbler, born in 1949 in Wilhelmsdorf near Ravensburg in southern Germany, is one of the most distinguished 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 region, since 2011 in the Rhineland. His extensive œuvre includes compositions for music and dance theatre, for large symphonic orchestra and ensembles, vocal music of all genres, chamber music, solo instrumental works, electronic music and performances.

Stäbler’s music often leaves the framework of the ordinary by integrating elements in his compositions that break through habitual performance situations: be it gestures or movements in space, the use of light, scents and everyday items, or the active involvement of the audience. His aim is to stimulate the mind, to sensitise the ears – and all senses – to new, unexpected patterns of perception and thought. Hence also Stäbler’s preference for the intertwining of the carefully crafted composition and the performers’ responsibility – who can, for example, be entrusted with the choice of sound material, sound generators or mutual (re)actions in a pre-formed template.

As a composer and teacher, he has established 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 politically active as a curator and organiser of interdisciplinary projects. For example, he was one of the first to open up industrial spaces for contemporary art. He initiated the founding of the Gesellschaft für Neue Musik Ruhr (Society for Contemporary Music Ruhr) and, together with the composers Johannes Kalitzke, Nicolaus A. Huber and the pianist Bernhard Wambach, the MusikFabrik NRW. He conceived the AKTIVE MUSIK series and was artistic director of the ISCM World Music Days in the Ruhr region in 1995. Time and again he has devoted himself to large-scale musical projects in public spaces – such as during RuhrWorks 1989 in New York, las jornadas de arte contemporanea 1993 in Porto (Portugal), IBA (International Building Exhibition) 1997 and 1999 in the Ruhr region and on behalf of the Goethe Institute of Ukraine with the project STEINE 2010 in the centre of Kiev. Stäbler took up the theme of refugee policy in the dance theatre ... auf dem Weg. Eine Entdeckungsreise, which was awarded the Children- and Youth Culture Prize NRW 2015, and in 2016 in the project THE RAFT – DAS FLOSS.

Important premieres have taken place in recent years in Bergen, Norway (Borealis Festival and Bergen International Festival), Bremen (The Drift, dance theatre), Wroclaw (ISCM World Music Days), Dresden, Düsseldorf (Tonhalle), Tokyo (Music Documents 13), Karlsruhe (ZKM), Frankfurt (hr-Sinfonieorchester), Ulm (including the music theatre Erlöst Albert E.), Trier (Celan-Gesänge and Magische Spiele for four pianos) as well as at Norske Opera Oslo (youth opera Simon) and Mainfranken Theater Würzburg (music theatre Letzte Dinge after Paul Auster, The Colour after HP Lovecraft and the concerto for orchestra Ausgewilderte Farben).

In 2019, Stäbler was invited for two world premieres at EIGHT BRIDGES | Music for Cologne, one of the biggest contemporary music festivals in Germany: HÖR-FLECKEN (a concert project for the underground station Heumarkt) and the orchestral version of Den Müllfahrern von San Francisco (commissioned by WDR). During the pandemic years, he created the vocal work all is to be dared for auditivvokal Dresden, commissioned by the Kunststiftung NRW, and the large ensemble works TIEFEN·SCHÄRFE and Lob des Selben for the nationwide anniversary project Beethoven2020. Stäbler currently finished a new music theatre piece for the Landestheater Linz (Austria), the 2024 European Capital of Culture – SALZ after Peter Handke's Kali. 

Collaboration with Kunsu Shim at EarPort Duisburg

In 2000, at the invitation of the Lehmbruck Museum, Gerhard Stäbler and his partner Kunsu Shim established the EarPort as a place for “experimental music and encounter of the arts” in Duisburg. Here the two composers developed during the following ten years their original concept of “PerformanceMusic” and “PerformanceConcerts”, which are characterised by a precisely composed dramaturgy. Within this framework, Stäbler also appears again and again as a performer and reciter.

Since the reopening of the EarPort in autumn 2015, Stäbler and Shim have intensified their long-standing collaboration with cultural institutions of the Rhine-Ruhr region – in Düsseldorf, for example, with the Kunsthalle, Tonhalle and, above all, the Heinrich Heine Institute, which looks after the artistic estate of the two composers as part of the Rhenish Music Archive. At the same time, they develop numerous interdisciplinary concepts for important national and international institutions, such as the projects Trialogue with the Korean video artist Kyungwoo Chun (with the publication of the bilingual ArtMusicBook bild.klang.los) and the International Winter Academies for PerformanceMusic in collaboration with the Korean composer Bohyun Kim. In 2016, the extensive program Im Gegenüber was created for the Diocese of Würzburg. From 2018 to 2020, Stäbler and the musicologist Elisabeth von Leliwa developed the KlangKunstLabor as an innovative music concept for people with dementia.

Stäbler and Shim maintain an intensive collaboration with the German sound artist Bernd Bleffert (OPENING Festival Trier) and the British performance artist and composer Alwynne Pritchard (Borealis Festival, Grieg Academy Bergen and others). In the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, Stäbler and Shim realised numerous large digital projects such as TIEFEN·SCHÄRFE as part of the Muziek Biennale Niederrhein or the concert series Quadrophonien in collaboration with composers from Ukraine, Great Britain, the Netherlands and South Korea.

International activity

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 for the second time the invitation as guest lecturers at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam for a workshop of several days with a final concert at the dance house ICK Dans Amsterdam.

Interrupted by the restrictions of the pandemic, Stäbler and Shim completed three residencies of several weeks in the Atelier Galata of the Kunststiftung NRW in Istanbul/Turkey in 2019 and 2022/23. Here they gave workshops at BAU University, culminating in a concert with students at the Barın Han Art House, and conceived the concert project Good-Bye Paradise? for the exhibition This Play at the ARTER Museum of Contemporary Art with the Hezarfen Ensemble. This successful collaboration will continue in November 2023 with ATEMWENDE, a second concert at ARTER Istanbul to accompany the exhibition of the renowned artist Sarkis.

Awards and impact

A long series of awards (e.g. Cornelius Cardew Memorial Prize 1982, Duisburg Music Prize 2003), grants (e.g. Japan Foundation, Djerassi Foundation/California, State of Lower Saxony, ZKM Karlsruhe), commissions (including the radio festivals Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik/WDR, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Musica Viva/BR, Festival Mouvement/SR) 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 Residence Kunststiftung NRW) document Gerhard Stäbler’s influence and significance in the contemporary music scene. In February 2024, Gerhard Stäbler received the German Music Author Award in the category “Composition Percussion”.

The list of publications on Stäbler’s work received a significant contribution in 2015 with Paul Attinello’s Gerhard Stäbler. live / the opposite / daring – music, graphic, concept, event. 2022 saw the publication of the anthology DAZWISCHEN. Die Zusammenarbeit der Komponisten Kunsu Shim und Gerhard Stäbler (edited by Elisabeth von Leliwa), which also contains a CD of piano and chamber music works by the two composers. In 2022, the CD Piano Music by Gerhard Stäbler | Kunsu Shim with the pianist Martin Tchiba was released. In 2023, the concert project Musik der (Un)Ruhe/Music of (Dis)Quiet, inspired by Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Restlessness, was released on DVD.