Biography

Detlef Heusinger, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1956, is one of the most versatile composers of his generation. He studied composition, conducting, musicology, German language and literature, and philosophy, as well as guitar, lute, and piano at the conservatories in Bremen, Cologne, and Freiburg, and at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. His most important teachers were Hans Werner Henze and Klaus Huber (composition), Francis Travis (conducting), and Hubert Kappel (guitar). He has received numerous awards for his compositional work, including the Music Prize of the City of Stuttgart and scholarships from Villa Massimo (Rome), Cité des Arts (Paris), the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of the SWF (Freiburg), and the Baldreit Scholarship (Baden-Baden). From 1990 to 1996, he taught at the University of Music in Bremen and led a conducting class at the Mürztaler Musikwerkstatt. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Music in Vienna, Harvard University, Goldsmith University London, and the University of Montreal, among others.

His compositional work focuses on the musical theater works Der Turm (1989, Theater Bremen/RB), Babylon (1997, Schwetzinger Festspiele, Nationaltheater Mannheim/SWR), Lulu (3rd Act) (2019, Theater Bremen), Jukeboxopera (2020, Theater Freiburg), Zeitreisemaschine (2021, Landestheater Detmold and Bregenz Festival), as well as the dance theater pieces Materialermüdung (1989, Stuttgart Ballet) and Volx Muzak (1993, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Reinhild-Hoffmann-Compagnie).

From 1983 onwards, Heusinger began working with live electronics in collaboration with Luigi Nono. As producer and director of the video opera Pandora I & II, he created his first music film for Radio Bremen in 1993, followed by Sintflut at the Donaueschingen Music Days (SWR) in 2001.

Since 1991, he has also been active as a director and, at times, as the director of the Rossini Festival on Rügen, staging operas by Handel, Rossini, Donizetti, Saint-Saëns, Offenbach, and Britten in Germany, France, Austria, Poland, and Switzerland.

As a composer and conductor, he has been engaged at such diverse festivals as Ars Electronica (Austria), Berliner Festwochen, Borealis Festival (Norway), Darmstadt Summer Courses, Donaueschingen Music Days, KLANG Festival Copenhagen, musica nova Helsinki, Roma Europa Festival (Italy), SALT Festival Canada, and Warsaw Autumn. Performers of his compositions include the Arditti Quartet, the Auryn Quartet, the Ensemble Modern, the ensemble recherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Ensemble Dal Niente, the Israel Contemporary Players, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the ORF Orchestra, the DSO Berlin, and the SWR Symphony Orchestra. As an electric guitarist, he has performed as a soloist with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others. As a sound director, he has worked with conductors such as Kent Nagano and François-Xavier Roth at the Royal Albert Hall in London and at festivals such as the Salzburg Festival and the Lucerne Festival.

As a conductor, he has worked with the Ensemble Modern, the Atlas Ensemble, the Collegium Novum Zurich, the New Music Orchestra (Poland), and the Savaria Symphony Orchestra (Hungary), among others. Since 2009, Heusinger has been the director of the ENSEMBLE EXPERIMENTAL, with which he recorded Luigi Nono's “Risonanze Erranti” for the NEOS label for the first time (awarded the German Record Prize in 2011). His own works have been released on the labels Wergo, Telos, harmonia mundi, and Dabringhaus und Grimm. The opera Zeitreisemaschine (Detmold State Theater and Bregenz Festival) was released on DVD in 2022 on the label kreuzberg records.

Detlef Heusinger has been artistic director of SWR EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO since 2006. His work has been published in Sintflut (nomos, 2001) and MATERIAL. Zum Werk von 1978 bis 1998 (Accad. Tedesca – Villa Massimo). As co-editor, he published Live Electronics im/in the SWR Experimentalstudio (wolke, 2019).