Silent Portraits (English version)

SILENT PORTRAIT Irene Kurka | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Irene Kurka – soprano, podcaster, curator, author, educator

Studied singing in Munich, Dallas and Vancouver. Over 250 world premieres, pioneering work in the repertoire for voice solo. Concerts a.o. with Hezarfen Ensemble Istanbul, e-mex, musikFabrik, notabu, Wandelweiser, Ensemble Garage and on stages like Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Konzerthaus Berlin, IGNM Basel, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, L’auditori Barcelona, Theater Dortmund, Arte Biennale Venice, Musica Sacra Maastricht, Beethovenfest Bonn, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Acht Brücken – Musik für Köln, Cafe Oto London, Counterflow Festival Glasgow, Muziek Biennale Niederrhein, A. DEvantgarde-Festival Munich and many others

Own projects like „Metroplitan-Trilogy“, „Salome-Extracts“, „Stabat Mater“, „To the Beloved“, „Play on Demand“, „The Inside of the Outside“.

Since 2018 Podcast neue musik leben, cooperation partner of nmz. In autumn 2020 the first book on the podcast will be published by Are Verlag.

SILENT PORTRAIT Christoph Grund | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Christoph Grund is one of the rare musicians of our time who practise this profession in the most diverse ways. As a pianist, he works with leading orchestras and ensembles, is in demand as a chamber musician and song accompanist and develops new piano music with renowned composers such as Mark Andre, Samir Odeh Tamimi, Sarah Nemtsov or Iris ter Schiphorst, often in combination with electronic sound expansions. He is a regular guest at international festivals.

As a composer he was influenced by his teachers Eugen Werner Velte, Mathias Spahlinger and Wolfgang Rihm, but also by the close collaboration with Michael Gielen, Pierre Boulez or Hans Zender as pianist in the SWR Symphony Orchestra. The list of his compositions includes tape pieces and electronic music, music for art videos, radio play music, solo and chamber music, works for choir and for chamber orchestra, music theatre and a film opera.

He passes on his experience with music in guest seminars at European universities.

SILENT PORTRAIT Dorothee Oberlinger | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Dorothee Oberlinger is a recorder player, founding director of the Ensemble 1700 and an opera conductor. She is also a professor at the Mozarteum Salzburg as well as director of the Potsdam Sanssouci Music Festival and the Bad Arolsen Baroque Festival.

She studied school music and German language and literature at the University and Music Academy of Cologne, then recorder in Cologne, Milan and Amsterdam. Since then she has been giving concerts with her own ensemble and as a soloist with leading international ensembles and orchestras all over the world, especially in the field of historically informed performance practice, but also regularly initiates numerous (premiere) performances of New Music and crossover projects for herself and her instrument.

She has received numerous awards for her artistic work, including the Echo Klassik (2008, 20013 and 2015), the Diapason d’Or, the ICMA Award (2020) and the Telemann Prize of the City of Magdeburg (2020). She was also made an honorary citizen of her home town of Simmern in the Hunsrück in 2016.

Dorothee Oberlinger solissimo on the red sofa on NDR with Jakob van Eycks Engels Nachtigaeltje

If this portrait is sold, Dorothee Oberlinger will give the proceeds to the Silent Portrait Project.

SILENT PORTRAIT Davide Nava | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Davide is a bass player and cellist based in Milan. He has more than fifteen years of professional experience in orchestras and chamber music. Since 2002 he has collaborated with: Il Complesso Barocco, ensemble Café Zimmermann, Orchestra il Pomo d’Oro, I Barocchisti, Gabetta Consort, La Risonanza, and the orchestra “La Scintilla” in Zürich. With these ensembles he has played in the most important music festivals in Europe and concert halls in the world, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Berliner Philarmonie, and the Čajkovskij hall in Moscow.

He is president and co-founder of the chamber orchestra on period instruments ControCorrente. A classical orchestra without conductor, which is completely independent and self-governing regarding repertoire choices and musical collaboration: 20 musicians from six different countries motivated by a lively spirit of enquiry and a visionary and creative approach.

SILENT PORTRAIT Letizia Renzini | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Letizia Renzini Letizia Renzini is an italian multimedia artist, DJ and director of New Music Theatre and New Opera, with Florence as her base. She travels regularly throughout Europe and beyond, assembling, creating, directing and performing her mixed media.

Trained in music, film studies, and the arts, she developed a way to the Gesamtkunstwerk or „opera totale“. Totale because her work is contemporary but spans millennia. Totale because she works with sound, image, the written word, gesture and the performing arts, combining the digital with the analog, engaging the audience in an experience of the immersive-yet-critical. Her radical approach to life and art aims to tackle the complexity of our contemporary age by looking backwards and standing on the shoulders of those who came before her, especially unconventional women. She believes in a New Artistic Renaissance, a new era in which the artist is demanded a timeless approach to the present, past and future.

DECAMERON 2.0 (Vimeo-Clip)

SILENT PORTRAIT Hüseyin Evirgen | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Hüseyin Evirgen is a composer, producer, DJ and director and lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. He works creatively at the interface between theatre, dance, video and performance and performs worldwide. He studied composition and piano at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and at the University of Istanbul. In the Salzburg Toihaus Theatre he has realised four dance and drama performances as artistic director.

In addition to Austrian composition grants, he received the „Elektronik Land Preis“ of the province of Salzburg in 2007 and was represented as an electronic musician in the Austrian pavilion at the Expo Shanghai in 2010. He is part of the producer duo CASSEGRAIN and active as a solo artist, MAGNA PIA. His records have been released on various labels such as Munich’s „Prologue Music“, Berghain’s „Ostgut Ton“ or the legendary UK techno label „Soma Records“. He founded his own label „Arcing Seas“ in 2016.

SILENT PORTRAIT Katharina Bäuml | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Katharina Bäuml is oboist, shawm specialist and director of the „Capella de la Torre„, today the most important German ensemble for Renaissance music. To date, 26 CD recordings of the „Capella de la Torre“ have been released, which have been awarded two ECHO and one OPUS Klassik. Katharina Bäuml also devotes herself to contemporary music on historical instruments and initiates encounters between music of the early modern period and jazz.

Capella on Air (Blog / in German)

Kultur ist systemrelevant! (YouTube-Video)
Josquin Desprez / Capella de la Torre

SILENT PORTRAIT Luise Enzian | 2020 | 50 x 28 cm

Luise Enzian is a freelance baroque harpist from Berlin.

She studied concert harp and baroque harp at the HfM Trossingen, „Hanns Eisler“ Berlin and at the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan. She was a soloist at the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin and performed in opera productions at the Theater an der Wien, the Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona and with the SWR Symphony Orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus and at the Donaueschinger Musiktage.

Luise is currently part of various ensembles, such as the baroque ensemble Volcania and plays in a duo with the saxophonist Asya Fateyeva. In addition to the repertoire of historical music for baroque harp, she is also interested in contemporary compositions, so she has played and recorded several world premieres of Moritz Eggert and is very committed to new compositions for her instrument.

Luise plays Johann Sebastian Bach (Vimeo-Clip)
Prélude aus BWV 1006a | Bachgeburtstag Köthener Prinzenhaus