Gerhard Stäbler is one of the most distinguished composers of his generation. 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. Premieres and first performances have taken place in recent years in Norway (Borealis Festival, Bergen International Festival, Norske Opera Oslo), Düsseldorf (Tonhalle), Tokyo (Music Documents 13), Karlsruhe (ZKM), Frankfurt (hr-Sinfonieorchester) and Kiev. 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 is currently working on a new music theatre piece for the Landestheater Linz (Austria), the 2024 European Capital of Culture.

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 KunstMusikBuch bild.klang.los). During the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, they realised numerous large digital projects such as TIEFEN·SCHÄRFE for the Lower Rhine Muziek Biennale or the concert series Quadrophonien in collaboration with composers from Ukraine, Great Britain, the Netherlands and South Korea.

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.

Portrait concerts, performances, guest lectures and workshops have taken Stäbler and his partner Kunsu Shim to many countries in Europe, Australia, North and South America, Israel, Japan and Korea. In 2018, with the support of the Goethe Institute, they undertook a tour 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, 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 were invited for the second time 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.

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, 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.

In February 2024, Gerhard Stäbler received the German Music Author Award in the category “Composition Percussion”.