BIOGRAPHY

Pianist zwischen Tradition und Avantgarde

The pianist Jan Gerdes is one of the most interesting and versatile musicians of his generation. As a pianist between tradition and the avant-garde he is a master of both the classical–romantic and contemporary repertoire. Jan Gerdes studied piano and percussion at the colleges of music in Hanover and Detmold with Kurt Bauer, Nerine Barett and Renate Kretschmar-Fischer, and took master classes with well-known pianists such as Anatol Ugorski, Halina Czerny-Stefanska and Edith Picht-Axenfeld.

Concerts all over the world have taken this award-winning musician to countries in Europe, South America and the Far East. He has given guest performances at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Maerzmusk Berlin, the Rotterdam Gaudeamus Week, Festival Musica Straßburg, the festival Chiffren, Ultraschall Berlin, the Stockhausen Courses, the Centre Acanthes in Metz, the Haller Bachtage, Kunstfest Weimar, the Beethovenfest Bonn, the WDR Musikfest, the Weingartener Tage Neuer Musik, the Darmstadt Summer Course and elsewhere, and has appeared in concert halls such as the Berliner Konzerthaus, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Essener Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus Wien, the Freiburger Konzerthaus, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, the Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Berliner Philharmonie.

He has made television, radio and CD recordings for NDR, WDR, MDR, HR, RB, ORF, Deutschland Radio Berlin and the label Ambitus. His solo CD Gelände/Zeichnung with very recent piano music appeared in 2008 with the label Zeitklang.
Jan Gerdes has worked with a number of leading contemporary composers, including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Ruzicka and Helmut Lachenmann, and has given the first performances of works by Sidney Corbett, Peter Gahn, Moritz Eggert, Annette Schlünz, Markus Bongartz, Brice Pauset, Alex Nowitz, Marcus Antonius Wesselmann and many others.

 

A traveller between the worlds of classical and new music, electronica and performance, in 2004 he founded the composing and improvising duo `EROL`, which explores the interface between piano music and electronic club culture. In 2011 he started working extensively on his electro- acoustic project `KAUM` with the argentinian-spanish sound artist Silvina Avila, since 2014 with the italian composer, Techno- producer and DJ Fabrizio Nocci as `Mutant TP`.

The music-theatre platform solosymphonie-productions, a joint venture with the actor Michael Fuchs, develops innovative programmes and interdisciplinary projects that juxtapose traditional and modern elements in music, theatre, literature, visual art and dance in a dramaturgy that turns them into a sensory experience. One example was the production 4.48 Psychose, a confrontation of the play by Sarah Kane with contemporary notated and improvised music, which was premiered at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. Jan Gerdes currently lives in Berlin and teaches piano and contemporary music at the University of Potsdam.

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