Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien

About Us

Incontri is the Institute for New Music at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. It serves as the primary platform for the university’s activities in contemporary music, composition, and electronic music.

The core of Incontri’s work is the composition class at HMTMH, an internationally and stylistically diverse community comprised of students at various levels (Bachelor, Masters, Soloklasse, Jungstudium) and six staff members, including professors, lecturers, and an administrator, in total representing 13 nationalities. But Incontri is also more generally a hub for events, projects, and collaborations in new music, bringing together staff and students from various corners of HMTMH and supporting links between HMTMH and an international network of performers, ensembles, festivals, and institutions for new music. This includes, at present, 10 Affiliated Professors who work regularly in contemporary music, representing various instrumental classes including piano, percussion, accordion, recorder, strings, conducting, and voice/opera. 

Renowned Guest Artists

Incontri offers a busy and vibrant series of concerts, lectures, and workshops from guest artists. Each semester we host at least 4–6 guest composers, who typically present their work for the Composition Seminar as well as offering individual composition lessons. Our guest composers are among the leading voices of current compositional activity.

Across the history of Incontri, these have included, for example:

In recent years, guests have included some of the most innovative, distinctive composers of our time, for example:

Mark André, Annesley Black, Milica Djordjević, Farzia Fallah, Francesco Filidei, Sara Glojnarić, Adriana Hölsky, Martón Illés, Johannes Kreidler, Klaus Lang, Fabien Lévy, George Lewis, Elena Mendoza, Sarah Nemtsov, Sergej Newski, Simon Steen Andersen, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Helmut Oehring, Stefan Prins, Marc Sabat, Charlotte Seither, Chiyoko Szlavnics., and Philip Venables.

Collaborations with guest performers are central to the activities of Incontri. Each semester, all students are given the opportunity to write new works for some of the world’s leading performers of contemporary music, who deliver collaborative workshops leading to concert performances, typically in professional settings in concert venues across Hanover.

Guest performers in recent years have included:

Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Mosaik, ELISION, asamisimasa, Ensemble Ascolta, Quatuor Bozzini, Trio Catch, Ensemble Handwerk, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, Trio SurPlus, Ensemble Schwerpunkt, Lange/Berweck/Lorenz, Wet Ink, and soloists such as Peter Veale, Sarah Saviet, Christine Chapman, Olaf Tzschoppe, Séverine Ballon, Erik Drescher, Florentin Ginot, and Seth Josel.

Frequently, these guests also deliver workshops and masterclasses in contemporary performance techniques for student performers in the broader HMTMH community.

Events and Activities

These guest visits sit alongside an exciting series of new music concerts organized internally. Incontri hosts the Forum Neue Kammermusik, which presents concerts of new music each semester, as well as Ensemble Incontri, the new music ensemble of HMTMH. The composition class presents an annual Klassenabend of student works performed by student colleagues, and our students are active in organizing and presenting ad hoc concerts and events, both within the university and externally, including through partnerships with various instrumental classes of hmtmh.

From 2026–30, this program of activities is further extended through the annual Incontri Ensemble-in-Residence program, part of a €11.4m grant to HMTMH from the VolkswagenStiftung. Each year during this five-year project, a guest ensemble presents multiple concerts, workshops, and masterclasses, including collaborations with the composition class and joint performances of major works for large ensemble from the new music repertoire alongside HMTMH student performers.

Incontri is also an important part of the Colourful Box series at HMTMH, extended residencies by guest performers and composers that bring together all areas and departments of the university. Recent Colourful Box guests have included Thierry de Mey, Jean-François Laporte, Jörg Widmann, and Simon Steen-Andersen.

From 2023–25, Incontri was a central part of the n[o]ice! project, led by Prof Mascha Pzörgen, a three-year collaborative project for contemporary music theater and vocal music, supported by funds from the Förderprogramms für Spitzenforschung und Lehre in Niedersachsen, the VolkswagenStiftung, and the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture.

Facilities, Equipment, and Electronic Music Resources

Incontri's activities are principally housed within Neus Haus 1, HMTMH's main building. We have three dedicated rooms, each of which has a slightly different focus. The New Music Lab is a large teaching space that combines acoutistic and digital resources, including a 7.1-channel loudspeaker system, an interactive touchscreen whiteboard, a grand piano, a collection of string, woodwind, and brass instruments, as well as the Incontri Library, a collection of scores, books, and recordings. The Immersive Audio Studio is a multifaceted teaching studio for electronic music, and includes both an 8-channel loudspeaker system (soon to be upgraded to a 16.2-channel 'dome' configuration) and an 'Analog Workstation' with a large collection of modern and historical synthesizers, including an original DX7 and a 1974 Moog synthesizer. And the Multimedia Studio is a smaller 5.1-channel studio, including two digital keyboards and a large collection of MIDI controllers and other digital interfaces. When not in use for teaching, all three spaces are available to Incontri students for their own work, rehearsals, and individual study.

Our electronic music activities are supported through the facilities, hardware, software, and staff of the fmsbw Electronic Music Studios. Incontri’s facilities include high-spec computers, loudspeakers, audio interfaces, and digital mixers, supported with the latest versions of the most important audio software, as well as an extensive collection of digital controllers, interfaces, microphones, and both digital and historical analog instruments, as well as hardware to support the concert presentation of multichannel acousmatic and mixed music. Our collection includes cutting-edge, professional-level hardware from Genelec, Neumann, Schoeps, dpa, AKG, Yamaha, QSC, beyerdynamic, Native Instruments, Akai, RME, Motu, and Apple, among others. An up-to-date listing of the hardware and software of the studios is available here.

Many fmsbw projects are presented externally—for example through the Musik 21 or Klangbrücken festivals, or through Incontri partnerships with external organizations such as the Hannoversche Gesellschaft für Neue Musik. Additionally, many of Incontri's guest artists perform student works that include live or fixed-media electronics, for example in works for ensemble and electronics for ELISION, works for 5.1-channel live electroncis and 'Babel Table' as part of a yearlong partnership with Jean-François Laporte and Totem Electronique, or works for synthesizers and electronics developed for Lange//Berweck//Lorenz.