June in Buffalo 2020 Senior Composer Robert H.P. Platz

Robert HP Platz will be working with students at this year’s June in Buffalo Festival as one of three senior composers and guest lecturers. Robert HP Platz was born in Baden-Baden in 1951. In 1970 he began to study music theory, piano and conducting in Freiburg / Breisgau. He studied composition with Wolfgang Fortner and musicology with Elmar Budde, as well as parapsychology with Hans Bender. In 1973 he moved to Cologne to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1977 he completed his conductor training with Francis Travis in Freiburg.

In 1978 and 1979, Platz received a scholarship from the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of Southwest Radio and then lived for a long time in the United States and Paris. In 1980 he attended a computer course for composers at the Paris IRCAM. This is where the tape for his piece Chlebnicov for chamber ensemble and tape (1980) was created, which was premiered at the Brussels IGNM festival in 1981.

From 1980 to 2001, Platz in Cologne directed the Cologne Ensemble he founded. Composers such as Scelsi, Xenakis, Kagel, Hosokawa, Sylvano Bussotti and Klaus Huber wrote for the ensemble, which specializes in contemporary music. With guest conductors, Platz worked with ensembles and orchestras such as the Ensemble Modern, the Klangforum and the Vienna series, the German Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of the WDR, the two SWR Symphony Orchestras Freiburg / Baden-Baden and Stuttgart, the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of the NDR Hannover, and the Lower Rhine Symphoners, the Orchester Philharmonique du Luxembourg or the Bavarian State Opera.

In 1989/90 there was space in the Schreyahn artists' yard , where the multi-part work SCHREYAHN for violoncello solo, flute, trumpet, soprano, two pianos and wind instruments. In 1990, at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation, he spent a few weeks as a composer in residence at Villa Serbelloni. A longer stay in Japan followed two years later. In 1996/98, up down strange charm was commissioned by the festival in Akiyoshidai, the Schömerhaus Klosterneuburg (Vienna Modern) and the WDR (overall premiere in Witten).

Since 1990, Platz has had a composition class at the Maastricht University of Music, combined with a seminar on performance practice in new music. Since 2000 he has been artistic director of the Schreyahner Herbst festival, and since 2005 member of the Bureau du Directeur of the electronic studio Center de Recherche et Formation Musicale de WallonieCRFMW, Liège.

Robert HP Platz lives in Cologne.