Heusinger Detlef
Born 1956 in Frankfurt am Main, he studied the guitar with Hubert Käppel, the lute and conducting with Francis Travis, music theory with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, composition with Hans Werner Henze and Klaus Huber, and electronic music with Mesías Maiguaschki at the music academies of Bremen, Cologne and Freiburg im Breisgau. Already as a student he started a cooperation with Luigi Nono and Hans-Peter Haller in live electronics projects. He has received numerous prizes and stipends for his compositional work, including the Villa Massimo Award in Rome, Cité des Arts in Paris, Heinrich Strobel Foundation of the SWF (SWR) and the Baldreit Stipend of the City of Baden-Baden. He has participated as a commissioned composer and conductor in festivals such as the Styrian Autumn Festival in Graz, Presteigne Festival in the UK, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Festival Antidogma Musica in Turin, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Dresdner Tage Neuer Musik, Romaeuropa Festival, Berliner Festwoche, Schwetzingen Festival, Warsaw Autumn and the Donaueschingen Music Festival.
Interpreters of his music include such renowned names as the Arditti Quartet, Auryn Quartet, Ensemble Modern, ensemble recherche, Ensemble SurPlus, Austrian ORF Orchestra, Yun Märkl conducting the SDR Orchestra, Lothar Zagrosek with the SWR Orchestra and Sian Edwards with the HR Orchestra.
In 1990–96 Detlef Heusinger has taught music form and analysis at the Hochschule der Künste in Bremen and led a conducting course at the Mürztaler Musikwerkstatt. He was the artistic director of the Rossini Festival in Rügen from 1993 until 1995. He has directed and produced a number of music films, including Pandora (1993) and Sintflut (2001), and has also worked on a film about Leni Riefenstahl on a Vienna State Opera commission.
Central to his work are stage compositions such as Der Turm (premiered in 1989 at the Bremen Theatre), Babylon (1997, Schwetzingen) and Schwarz Rot Gold (1998, Frankfurt/Main), and the dance theatre pieces Totem + Tabu (premiered 1992 in Hanover) and Volx Muzak (1993, Schauspielhaus Bochum). As a conductor he has worked notably with the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Surplus, Collegium Novum in Zurich and Ensemble Experimental des SWR (since 2009), with whom he has made the first recording of Luigi Nono’s Risonanze erranti, receiving the German Music Critics’ Award in 2011. Detlef Heusinger has been the artistic director of the Experimentalstudio since October 2006.
