A German composer, stage director and artistic director born August 17, 1952 in Neustadt / Weinstrasse (Germany).
With a diploma in sociology and music from the University of Frankfurt, Heiner Goebbels is one of the representatives of music theatre. He draws on varied forms of artistic expression, from Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht as well as his earliest experiences in the domains of experimental rock, jazz and the extreme leftwing wind band the Sogenannten Linksradikalen Blasorchester that he founded in 1976.
He has written for the cinema, the stage and dance, has realised radiophonic pieces and has staged his own shows. He has collaborated in particular with the Ensemble Modern and his works have been played many times in Europe as well as in the USA, South America, Australia and Asia.
Goebbels seeks to eliminate the boundary between opera and theatre. He intimately combines music, theatre, visual elements and texts taken from Heiner Müller, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Paul Valery, Gertrude Stein, Elias Canetti, Paul Auster…
His Protean output includes works for the concert (Surrogate Cities for large orchestra, 1994, first performed by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie; Walden for orchestra, 1998, first performed by the Ensemble Modern; Aus einem Tagebuch for orchestra, 2003, premiered by the Philharmonie of Berlin; Surrogate for piano, voice and percussion, 2015), music theatre (Die Wiederholung, 1995; Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten, 2002; Eraritjaritjaka, 2004; I went to the house but did not enter, 2008; When the Mountain changed its clothing, 2012) and sound installations (Timée/Timeios, 2000; Stifters Dinge, 2007; Genko-An 107031, 2017).
Also a stage director, he has staged rarely performed works of other composers: John Cage: Europeras 1&2 (2012), Harry Partch: Delusion of the Fury (2013) and De Materie by Louis Andriessen (2014).
