Eigenständige Stimmen

Zafraan is a Berlin-based ensemble founded in 2009, known for its dynamic engagement with contemporary life and society through music that often intersects with other art forms such as theater, performance, and installation. Comprised of musicians from diverse international backgrounds, Zafraan collaborates with renowned conductors, artists, and composers to present dramaturgically rich programs, staged concerts, and immersive formats. A key aspect of their work is the constant push to expand artistic boundaries — taking creative risks to develop innovative performances and actively engaging in new music theatre productions and educational initiatives for young musicians and composers.

GRAMMY®-nominated Qazaq-American performer TIMUR, “the extravagantly transgressive tenor” (LA Times), has made solo appearances with LA Philharmonic, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Theater Magdeburg, Opera Philadelphia, National Czech Opera Theater, Comédie de Genève, PROTOTYPE, Santa Cecilia Academy, Müpa Budapest, NOF and the Industry LA, among many others. He premiered over forty operatic and chamber works by many composers, including David Lang, Gerald Barry, Thomas Adès, Louis Andriessen, Michael Gordon, Silvano Bussotti, Ellen Reid, David T. Little, Anne LeBaron, the late Peter Eötvös, Jǐri Trtik, Vera Ivanova, Tobias Picker, Kate Moore and Tod Machover. His glam-opera band Timur and the Dime Museum, “a marvel of golden inflections” (NY Times), closely collaborates and creates theatrical projects with Beth Morrison Projects, including ecological requiem Collapse (REDCAT, Operadagen Rotterdam, BAM 2015 Next Wave Festival); industrial metal opera film Black Lodge (Opera Philadelphia, CAP UCLA, Folkopera, Malmö Opera, PROTOTYPE), and Timur's solo projects The Great Soviet Bucket (Miami Light Project) and a sci-fi comedy Klaus from Space (O. Festival Rotterdam, Klanggg_Festival Switzerland, Theater Magdeburg). He is currently developing a new musical project by Nick Urata of DeVotchka, directed by long-time collaborator visionary director Julien Chavaz. His voice is featured on the Hollywood soundtrack of Ruby Sparks and Hulu’s The Great, and on recordings released by Cantaloupe, Naxos USA, Milan Records, Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon and ANTI-.

Samir Odeh-Tamimi is a Palestinian-Israeli composer based in Berlin. He has developed a unique musical language that draws on his deep engagement with both Western avant-garde music and the performance practices of Arabic music. His ongoing research into the histories of the ancient Orient and ancient Greece has become an increasingly important source of inspiration in his work.

Odeh-Tamimi’s compositions are regularly performed at leading festivals and concert halls across Europe and have earned him numerous awards and distinctions. His music has been interpreted by ensembles and performers including Trio Viaggio, Ensemble Phoenix (Basel), Ensemble Resonanz, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Modern, ensemble mosaik, Ensemble Aventure, Ensemble Linea (Strasbourg), Ensemble UnitedBerlin, and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, among others.

His oratorio "Hinter der Mauer" (Behind the Wall) was commissioned by the RIAS Kammerchor to commemorate the 20th anniversary of German reunification. Recent highlights include the music theatre work "Philoktet", which premiered at the ECLAT Festival 2023. Composed for Neue Vocalsolisten and the Zafraan Ensemble, the piece is inspired by Sophocles’ tragedy as well as by texts by André Gide and Heiner Müller. He has also been commissioned by the Biennale di Venezia to compose the sextet "Roaïkron" for the Christian Benning Percussion Group for their 2024 edition.

Leonid Desyatnikov is a prominent composer whose work spans opera, ballet, film scores, and concert music. Known for his distinctive, genre-defying style, Desyatnikov often employs centonization — the weaving together of musical quotations — as a key compositional technique.

His music has been performed at major venues including La Scala, the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Mariinsky Theatre. He has collaborated extensively with renowned violinist and conductor Gidon Kremer, and has composed numerous stage works for the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

Among his principal works are the opera "The Children of Rosenthal" (libretto by Vladimir Sorokin); the ballets "Lost Illusions and Opera"; the chamber opera "Poor Liza" (after Nikolay Karamzin); the cantata Gift (on poems by Gavriil Derzhavin); the vocal cycle "Dichterliebe und -leben" (on poems by Daniil Kharms and Nikolay Oleynikov); "The Leaden Echo" for voice(s) and instruments (after a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins); the choral symphony "The Rite of Winter 1949"; and "Songs of Bukovina" for piano.

From 2009 to 2010, Desyatnikov served as Music Director of the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia.

He left Russia in March 2022 and currently lives in Haifa, Israel.

Sivan Cohen Elias is an electroacoustic composer, performer, and improviser. Her work is cross-disciplinary, combining modified and digitally extended musical instruments, sound objects, body gestures, and video, while exploring social themes such as failure, entanglement, and illusion.
Sivan Cohen Elias earned her B.Ed.Mus and MMus degrees from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Tel Aviv University, respectively, completed postgraduate studies at the School of Music and Performance Arts in Vienna, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is currently a 2024 ACF McKnight Composer Fellow with the American Composers Forum.

Her work spans the United States, Europe, Israel, and the United Kingdom, where she has received numerous prestigious international awards, including a 2020 Fromm Foundation commission, first prize in the 2016 International Staatstheater Darmstadt Music-Theater Composition Competition, a 2012 Akademie Schloss Solitude residency, and recognition in the 2011 Impuls Competition. Her music has been performed internationally by ensembles and soloists such as Klangforum Wien, Winnie Huang, Talea Ensemble, Musikfabrik, JACK Quartet, and Line Upon Line Percussion, among many others. Festival appearances include RealTime Festival, Darmstadt, Bludenz, Bang on a Can, Wien Modern, Resonant Bodies, and Ultraschall.

Michaela Catranis is an award-winning composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist. With a strong background in classical piano, Michaela Catranis' eclectic tastes have led her to explore experimental music, electronic, jazz and beyond, crafting a highly versatile sonic language. Her multi-media performances have received international acclaim, sound worlds that spin out in a colorful exchange of disciplines, criss-crossing music, art, technology and dance. This process of collective art-making lies at the heart of Michaela’s work, which she feels echoes our shared humanity, a thirst for togetherness born from her experiences growing up in a family of eleven.

In 2018, she won the TONALi18 Composition Prize. The following year, she was awarded the Contemporary Arts Alliance-Berlin Scholarship, commissioned by Ensemble Modern as part of the Composer's Seminar/Cresc. Biennale for Contemprary Music and selected as composer laureate of the Académie Voix Nouvelles - Royaumont. Her works have been performed internationally in concert halls such as the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Berliner Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall and the KKL Lucerne. She has written for the Mivos Quartet, Zafraan Ensemble, RIOT, Ensemble Modern, KNM, among others, and works closely with soprano, Johanna Vargas, and Berlin-based Duo Amabile. Michaela holds degrees in piano performance from the Peabody Conservatory and composition from the Hanns Eisler School of Music.

Oleg Krokhalev creates works at the intersection of music, performance, and technology. His practice spans acoustic and electronic composition, DIY robotic instruments, and sound installations — where he explores sound as a tactile and spatial experience — as well as music for film and theatre.

Born in Perm, Russia, Oleg studied composition with Prof. Vladimir Tarnopolski at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory and later completed his Master’s degree with Prof. José-María Sánchez-Verdú at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. His work has been performed by ensembles such as Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Zohn Collective, Ensemble Garage, MCME, and the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, among others. Recent highlights include two operas: "Notes from the Underground" (Theatre of Nations, Moscow, 2021) and "Transient" (after Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Düsseldorf, 2023).

Mansoor Hosseini is a Swedish avant-garde composer. Born in Iran, he studied composition at the Paris Music Conservatory, the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and the Gothenburg Music Conservatory. He also studied film music at the University of Gothenburg and screenwriting at the Gothenburg Film University. His theatrical music creations are inspired by martial arts, visual art, contemporary dance, and theatre. In 2007, he founded Themus Ensemble with the mission of popularizing the concept of theatrical music. As a musician, Hosseini is deeply engaged with improvisation and has performed as a percussionist with various ensembles across diverse musical genres.

He is currently working on his fiction film about Witold Lutosławski in collabration with Sinfonia Varsovia, The Chopin University of Music, The Polish Institute, Edition PWM, Swedish Composer's Society and POLMIC.

Born in Turkey, Zeynep Gedizlioğlu studied composition with, among others, Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe and Ivan Fedele in Strasbourg, as well as music theory with Michael Reudenbach. Her music has been performed at leading international festivals such as ECLAT Stuttgart, Wien Modern, Salzburger Festspiele, Musica Strasbourg, Beethovenfest Bonn, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, musikprotokoll Graz, cresc… Biennale für aktuelle Musik Frankfurt, G((o))ng Tomorrow Copenhagen, November Music ’s-Hertogenbosch, and Ultraschall Berlin. Zeynep has collaborated with ensembles and orchestras including the hr-Sinfonieorchester, Vienna RSO, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, 2e2m, ascolta, oenm, Ensemble PHACE, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Quatuor Diotima, Scharoun Ensemble, and the Arditti Quartet.

Her composing career has been recognized with several awards: in 2012, she received the Ernst von Siemens Composition Prize; in 2014, she was named Composer of the Year at the Donizetti Prize in Istanbul; in 2018, she received the Heidelberg Female Artist Prize; in 2019, the Composition Prize of the Academy of Arts Berlin; and in 2022, the German Music Authors’ Prize in the category of chamber music. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

Tarek Alali is a Syrian-German composer and guitarist. He completed his classical guitar studies at the Hochschule für Musik Saar, where he is currently studying composition with Arnulf Herrmann. His music is influenced by Arabic musical traditions, particularly the Maqam system. His works have been performed by ensembles such as Zafraan Ensemble, Trickster Orchestra,
and the JugendEnsembleNeueMusik Rheinland-Pfalz/Saar (JENM), and featured at international festivals including the Nürtingen International Guitar Festival, the Festival für aktuelle Klangkunst “OPENING 25” in Trier, and Concerts in the United States. In addition to composing, he remains active as a guitarist.

Born in Valladolid in 1980, Miguel Pérez Iñesta studied clarinet, piano and ballet in Asturias, before moving to Berlin, where he completed his studies at the Hanns Eisler Musikhochschule and at the Karajan Akademie of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Founding member and artistic director (2012-2017) of the Berlin based Zafraan Ensemble, Miguel has worked with some of the greatest composers of our time, such as Helmut Lachenmann, Hèctor Parra, Gyorgy Kurtág, Matthias Pintscher, Tristan Murail, Chaya Czernowin, Johannes Schöllhorn, Elena Mendoza, Sarah Nemtsov, Oscar Bianchi, Samir Odeh-Tamimi or Pierre Boulez.

Always at home in theatrical, scenic or operatic contexts and conscious of the power of sound as a poetic tool, conductor Miguel Pérez Iñesta has lately focused his activity on contemporary opera and the scenic symphonic concert. He has worked with artistic partners such as the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon.