Mark Andre


Mark Andre is a French composer living in Germany. He was known as "Marc André," his birth name, until 2007, when he formally revised the spelling. He lives in Berlin. Andre's compositions durch, ...auf... III, and Wunderzaichen received multiple votes in a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000.

Biography

Andre studied composition from 1987 to 1993 with Claude Ballif and Gérard Grisey at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique. In Paris, he also graduated from the École Normale Supérieure about the music of Ars subtilior. In 1995 he received a scholarship from the French Foreign Ministry, which enabled him to continue his studies of composition at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart with Helmut Lachenmann. In the Experimental Studio for Acoustic Art he studied electronic music with André Richard. In 1996, he was able to continue his studies in Stuttgart by a grant from the Akademie Schloss Solitude. Numerous other scholarships and residencies followed. Since then, Andre has been heard at the Donaueschingen Festival in 2007 with his large Orchestral and electronic triptych "...auf... " III, and was awarded the prize of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, since public attention has been drawn to his work even more. But even before Andre earned numerous major awards, so at the Darmstadt Summer Courses.
In 2002, the Ernst von Siemens Composers' Prize was awarded to him. Living in Berlin, Andre teaches at the Frankfurt University of Music and at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. As part of the project "...auf...", a collaboration between the Ensemble Modern and Siemens Arts Program, in cooperation with the Goethe Institute, Andre's piece "üg", was developed in Istanbul jointly with the computer music and sound engineer Joachim Haas and others, and was premiered in October 2008 at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt by the Ensemble Modern. In 2009 he was appointed a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden. Since 2010 he has been a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts. 2012: Fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study and a member of the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. On 2 March 2014 his opera "Wunderzaichen" was premiered in Stuttgart directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito.
Andre is well known on the continent, though does not have such a large profile in the predominantly English-speaking world. Referring to this, The Guardian noted "though Manchester International Festival director Alex Poots's claim that Mark Andre is "one of Europe's leading composers" is far-fetched, there is no doubt that Andre's music remains virtually unknown in the UK."

Works

Andre's music is published by Edition Peters in Frankfurt am Main.