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.

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, Harrison Birtwistle, Vinko Globokar, Klaus Huber, Helmut Lachenmann, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, Jean-Claude Risset, Mathias Spahlinger, and Walter Zimmermann. In recent years, guests have included some of the most innovative, distinctive composers of our time, for example Mark André, Annesley Black, Milica Djordjević, Francesco Filidei, Sara Glojnarić, Adriana Hölsky, Martón Illés, Johannes Kreidler, Klaus Lang, Fabien Lévy, George Lewis, Sarah Nemtsov, Sergej Newski, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Helmut Oehring, Stefan Prins, Marc Sabat, Charlotte Seither, and Chiyoko Szlavnics.

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, Trio Catch, Ensemble Handwerk, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, Trio SurPlus, Ensemble Schwerpunkt, Wet Ink, and soloists such as Peter Veale, Sarah Saviet, Christine Chapman, Olaf Tzschoppe, Séverine Ballon, and Seth Josel. Frequently, these guests also deliver workshops and masterclasses in contemporary performance techniques for student performers in the broader HMTMH community.

2024–25 Guests: Quatuor Bozzini, Lange/Berweck/Lorenz, Erik Drescher, Florentin Ginot, Farzia Fallah, Lovre Bogdanic, Elena Mendoza, Simon Steen Andersen, Cassandra Miller, Philip Venables

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.

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, and Jörg Widmann. Currently, Incontri is 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.

Electronic Music

Our electronic music activities are supported through the facilities, hardware, software, and staff of the fmsbw Electronic Music Studios. Incontri’s facilities include stereo, 5.1, and 8-channel studios, all with 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 (including a 1974 Moog synthesizer), 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, 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, or works for 5.1-channel live electroncis and 'Babel Table' as part of a yearlong partnership with Jean-François Laporte and Totem Electronique.