Alex Nowitz

About Alex Nowitz

Composer

Alex Nowitz is a composer of vocal, instrumental and electroacoustic music who wrote numerous chamber music pieces and, recently, two rather short pieces for orchestra. His main focus though is the voice. In this way, he created works of full evening lenths for opera, dance and theatre, commissioned by institutions like the Staatstheater Braunschweig (Traumnovelle, 2013), Staatsoper unter den Linden Berlin (hyp‘op III: UNIKATE, 2006), Theater Osnabrueck (Die Bestmannoper, 2006), Schaubuehne Berlin (The Cut and The City, 2008; Summernight's Dream, 2006) or fabrik Potsdam (Screaming Popes, 2004 ).
Orchestras he collaborated with are the Polizeiorchester of the Land Brandenburg (Mäander, 2014).
Ensembles he composed for are such as the Kammerakademie Potsdam (Chimères, 2011; Musik für neun Instrumente, 2003), work-in-progress Berlin (Streichtrio Nr.2: Der Blick zurück, 2010), Maulwerker Berlin (Tante Marianne, 2010) or Curious Chamber Players Stockholm (A Few Euphemisms, 2012).

Voice artist

Alex Nowitz is also a voice artist, whistling and singing virtuoso who performed in collaboration with numerous musicians from various stylistic areas and who interprets composed new music. He is a tenor and countertenor who also presents a wide array of various extended voice techniques. Since 2004, he has created various solo performance formats (f.i. Studies for a Self-Portrait, Schaubühne Berlin, 2008) and has performed in numerous concert halls and at New Music festivals on the international stage: Warsaw Autumn, Gaudeamus Week Amsterdam, Total Music Meeting Berlin, Jauna Musika Vilnius, Fresh Sound Series San Diego, Musica Viva Lisbon, Multiplace Festival Bratislava, NIME Oslo, fylkingen Stockholm, or universities like Newcastle upon Tyne, Beam Festival at the Brunel University London, etc.

Residencies and grants

Alex Nowitz received many residencies and grants. In 2014, he was artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, supported by the Minister of Culture and Media of the Federal Government of Germany. In the same year, he was also at STEIM in Amsterdam to build a backup version of the strophonion, funded through the 'inter-Stip' grant funded by the Ministery of Science, Research and Culture of Land Brandenburg (MWFK). Since November 2014, Alex Nowitz is working on the PhD-project "The Multivocal Practitioner: A Celebration of the Vocal Arts" at the Stockholm University of the Arts, accompanied by Rolf Hughes as main and Sten Sandell as external supervisor.

Electroacoustic instruments

During his vocal solo performances Alex Nowitz plays two electroacoustic instruments that belong to the instrument group of live electronics, both of which are developed at STEIM in Amsterdam, the stimmflieger (consisting of Wii-remotes and a software patch by Daniel Schorno and Alex Nowitz, 2007-2010) and the strophonion (2010-2015). Frank Baldé created the software configuration of the strophonion, Florian Goettke was responsible for the ergonomics and the wooden shape of the original version and Mr. Stock assembled the electronics. The 3D printed backup version was created by Nicolò Merendino and the electronics by Sukandar Kartadinata.

Read more about designing and playing the strophonion

Read more about the development of the instrument