Walter Zimmermann

About Walter Zimmermann

Walter Zimmermann, born in 1949 in Schwabach (Middle Franconia), studied piano, violin, and oboe, and began composing at the age of twelve. He completed his secondary education in Fürth and studied piano with Ernst Gröschel. From 1968 to 1970, he was the pianist of the Ars Nova Ensemble in Nuremberg and studied composition with Werner Heider. From 1970 to 1973, he studied with Mauricio Kagel as part of the Cologne Courses for New Music, with O.E. Laske at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, and at the Jaap-Kunst Center for Ethnomusicology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1974 and 1975, he resided in the United States to study computer music, and traveled to various states to conduct interviews with American composers in connection with the book Desert Plants. From 1977 to 1984, he founded the Beginner Studio in a loft in Cologne, where contemporary music concerts were held regularly. He taught composition at the Conservatory of Liège (1980–1984), and he was frequently invited abroad: to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the ESMUC in Barcelona, the Juilliard School in New York, and Cornell University in Ithaca. Walter Zimmermann taught composition at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1993 to 2014.

His works span all genres and repertoires and have earned him various distinctions: City of Cologne Prize, Residency at the Villa Massimo (Rome) in 1987, Prix Italia in 1988 for “Die Blinden,” Schneider-Schott Prize in 1989, nominated to member of the Berlin Academy of Arts in 2006. Walter Zimmermann is also the author of publications on the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman, on the philosophy of Novalis and Wittgenstein, and a manual by Liu Han Wen on Chan Mi Qi Gong technique.

His complete works are published by Verlag Neue Musik Berlin. Comments, essays on his work, and recordings of his music can be found on his website: beginner-press.de.