About Leopold Hurt

Born in Regensburg in 1979, Leopold Hurt studied composition with Manfred Stahnke at Hamburg University of Music and Theater as well as zither and period performance practice at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich, where he took his degree with Georg Glasl. He participated in master-classes with Dieter Schnebel, Paul-Heinz Dittrich, and Brian Ferneyhough (composition) as well as Nigel North (early music) and attended courses in electronic music at IRCAM in Paris.

His oeuvre covers the entire spectrum of instrumental and vocal music, with the zither featuring prominently in several of his compositions. A central role in his electronic pieces is given to an engagement with historical sound recordings.

As an instrumentalist he has appeared with the Bavarian, West German and North German radio symphony orchestras, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma, and the Hamburg Philharmonic. He has also helped in many ways to integrate the zither into our current music life. Among other things, this has given rise to his collaboration with the Teichmann brothers, an electronic duo based in Berlin. Since 2001 he has been a founding member of the Decoder Ensemble for current music (Hamburg) and the international trio Greifer. The Goethe Institute has repeatedly commissioned him to undertake concert tours of China, Ireland, and Lebanon.

Among the many awards he has received for his music are the Gustav Mahler Composition Prize (Klagenfurt, 2008), the Stuttgart Composition Prize (2010), and the Bach Scholarship from the City of Hamburg (2011). Scholarships from the state of Bavaria enabled him to live at the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris) from 2003 to 2004 and at the International Villa Concordia Artists House (Bamberg) from 2009 to 2010.

Today Leopold Hurt lives and works in Hamburg.