Image © Oscar Loeser, 2016.
Alex Nowitz (* 1968) is a composer and vocal performance artist, furthermore improviser, sound artist and musician, artist-researcher and author from Germany. His compositions comprise vocal and instrumental chamber music, full-length operas, orchestral miniatures, electroacoustic music, multimedia concert formats as well as music for dance and spoken theatre. Both in his vocal performance art and in his compositions dedicated to others he explores the notion of multivocality.
While applying extended vocal techniques in experimental punk rock, noise, jazz and improvisation projects dating back to the early 1990s, Alex Nowitz studied the classical singing voice (tenor), composition, jazz and music education at various universities in Germany and USA until he graduated from the University of Potsdam (DE) in 2000. After defending the PhD thesis Monsters I Love: On Multivocal Arts, in April 2019 he earns a doctorate in 'Performative and Mediated Practices with Specialisation in Opera' from the Stockholm University of the Arts.
As soloist, but also collaborating with numerous musicians and vocal performers, he appears in different contexts, including festivals for composed new music, improvisation and jazz as well as stage productions, such as music and spoken theatre or dance. The range of his voice covers the tenor and countertenor, the whistling and speaking voice, low-pitch singing techniques and a variety of experimental voice types.
Expanding the field of vocal performance art, he also applies custom and gesture-controlled live electronics, such as the strophonion developed at the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam. During the annual festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Gothenburg 2009, he was awarded the first prize of the European Conference of Promoters for New Music (ECPNM) for performing his composition Minotaurus featuring voice and live electronics (stimmflieger [voice kite]).
As composer he receives commissions from opera and theatre houses, such as the Theater Osnabrueck, State Theatre Brunswick or Schaubuehne Berlin, as well as from new music ensemble ensembles, such as the Kammerakademie Potsdam, Work In Progress Berlin, Ensemble Mosaik Berlin, Maulwerker Berlin, Curious Chamber Players Stockholm, et al.
Receiving numerous fellowships and grants, such as the half-year artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris in 2014 or the three-month residency at the Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf (DE) in 2020, he was guest artist at the Villa Aurora, Los Angeles in 2022. The Musikfonds e.V. in Berlin and the Ministry for Science, Research and Culture of the Land Brandenburg supported and funded his work, most recently in the year 2023.
As artist-researcher and author Alex Nowitz composes essays and articles in English and German, published in peer-reviewed online journals and books. In both his writings and lecture-performances he focuses on the interaction and the mutual penetration between art and academia. One of the latest publications of that kind is the chapter 'Assemblages of Multivocal and Schizophonic Practices: Unleashing the Machined Voice' in the Orpheus Institute Series Machinic Assemblages of Desire: Deleuze and Artistic Research 3 (Mar. 2021).
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https://nowitz.de
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https://nowitz.de
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