Steffen Wick belongs to a young generation of composers who are blurring the boundaries between different genres. He combines classical and contemporary stylistic elements into a modern, poetic sound language.
Career
Steffen Wick studied composition under professor Caspar Johannes Walter, music theory, piano and new media at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. He then went on to expand his composition studies in a master class with Moritz Eggert at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and gained further artistic input from personal encounters with Steve Reich, Pascal Dusapin, Wolfgang Rihm and Detlev Glanert.
Orchestration
Steffen Wick’s concert works include all genres: from lavish scores for symphonic orchestras (such as
Womb), chamber music (such as
Inner Monologue for vocal quartet, a work commissioned by the Siemens Arts Program), to exotic compositions (such as the commissioned composition
Transborder for Korean gayageums and European instruments).
Performances
Steffen Wick’s music has been performed at the Bregenzer Festspiele, the Wiener Musikverein, the Konzerthaus Berlin and Radialsystem among others. His works have been performed by the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Sinfonietta Basel, the Philharmonic Orchestras of Cottbus, Freiburg and Gießen as well as the »Eight Cellists« of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Steffen Wick’s compositions are published by Ricordi and can be enjoyed live all over the world in countries such as China, South Korea, Canada, the USA, Finland, France, Spain and Ukraine. He has albums published by Sony Classical and Universal Music.
Main area of interests
As a pianist, Steffen Wick focuses on the piano in particular in his works. In the Autumn of 2014, the
White and
Blue albums, on which grand piano and instrumental sounds merge with subtle electronics, were released as the start of PIANO PARTICLES, the classical electronic series, which he worked on with his artistic partner Simon Detel. The visualisation for the opening piece
Aero by Stephen Malinowski/USA won the “Visual Music Award” at the Cocoon Club in Frankfurt, awarded by the Institute für Synästhesie und Neue Medien Frankfurt. For the live concert of PIANO PARTICLES, the designer Marc Engenhart designed a paper installation made of 300 individual paper objects, which received the “red dot award: communication design”. The multiple-award-winning choreographer Marco Goecke choreographed a dance performance of PIANO PARTICLES with the Ballet Ensemble of the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich as well as the dancer and choreographer Eric Gauthier and his company.
Concert projects
In 2008, the "video concerto"
beyond vision, for which Steffen Wick wrote the music, was performed by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra with a video installation in the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, phaeno Wolfsburg, the Kunstverein Stuttgart and the Museum für Kommunikation Frankfurt.
In summer 2009, the
Soundtrack Symphony was performed in a spectacular open air concert on a floating stage in Heilbronn with over 200 performers, fireworks and a light show. In 2013, Steffen Wick was commissioned by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts to compose music to silent films by film pioneer Georges Méliès for the Henschel Quartet. This was curated by the filmmaker Edgar Reitz.
Film
Steffen Wick composed the soundtrack for the cinematic documentary film Rheingold – Faces of a River with Ben Becker and electronics by Simon Detel. For the 3D animated movie Manou the Swift, voiced by Kate Winslet and Willem Dafoe, Wick wrote new music for orchestra and adapted several PIANO PARTICLES songs.
Music Theatre
In 2012, the stage performance of Wick's music theatre piece
Musicophilia, based on the novel of the same name by Oliver Sacks, was "particularly expressive" (Süddeutsche Zeitung). This production won the Music Theatre Now Prize from the International Theatre Institute in 2015.
His music theatre performance
Particles, with influences from “physical theatre” and “nouveau cirque”, a work commissioned by the Friedrichsbau Varieté Stuttgart, was premiered in March 2015 and was performed 50 more times within two months.
Awards
In 2011, Steffen Wick was a winner of the composition competition at the Bregenzer Festspiele. In 2013, Wick and Detel won awards for their projects from the German Government as “creative pilots”. In 2014, Steffen Wick received a residency at the International House of Artists Villa Concordia, 2015 at the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris and in 2017 in the Künstlerhaus Salzwedel.