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Photo: Laurent Orseau

In his compositional work Prins seeks to critique received convention, to break the framework of the usual, and dispose of aesthetic axioms. He envisions a musical art form beyond the safe confines of the »scene«, wherein the connection to the larger cultural discourse has gotten lost. A central pre-condition for the making of a new music with a future is the role of the aware, critical observer, one who is prepared to exploit the technologies and mechanisms of the prefabricated media with a view to their possibilities for new music. – Stefan Prins lives up to this calling.

 

(Michael Rebhahn, 2012)

Together with Pieter Matthynssens, Stefan Prins is artistic director of the Belgian ensemble for contemporary music, Nadar Ensemble.

 

Performing improvised music is another important part of Prins's musical activities. Together with Thomas Olbrechts & Joachim Devillé he was one of the founders of the now inactive collectief reFLEXible. Since 2011, he plays laptop in the band Ministry of Bad Decisions, together with Yaron Deutsch (e-guitar), and performs regularly with double bass player Peter Jacquemyn, guitarist Matthias Koole or in ad-hoc formations.

 

He has taught composition at a.o. the Darmstadt Summercourses, Impuls Academy and the Syntetis Academy and was guest-professor composition at the Hochschule für Kunste Bern and the Norwegian Academy for Music Oslo. Since 2020 he is professor of composition and director of the "Hybrid Music Lab" at the Dresden University of Music/Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria Von Weber Dresden.

After graduating as an engineer (specialised in photonics), Stefan Prins (b. Belgium, 1979) studied piano and composition at the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp, Belgium, where he obtained his Masters degree in Composition with Luc Van Hove. Concurrently, he studied "Technology in Music" at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with Peter Swinnen and "Sonology" at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and obtained a PhD in musical composition at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) under the guidance of Chaya Czernowin. 

 

His music often includes and reflects on contemporary technologies and new media, thematising its relationship with the physical, performing body and the environments it inhabits.

 

He received awards such as the “Kunstpreis Berlin für Musik”, “Kranichsteiner Musikpreis für Komposition”, “ISCM Young Composers Award” or the “International Impuls Composition Award”. His music is performed worldwide on festivals such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Wittener Tage für Neue Musik, Eclat, Ultraschall Berlin, Münchener Biennale für neues Musiktheater, Wien Modern, Time:Spans NY, Warsaw Autumn, Gaudeamus Festival, Tzlil Meudcan, Impuls Festival, HCMF & Ultima Festival by Nadar Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, Nikel Ensemble, Trio Accanto, Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Mosaik, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Ensemble Modern, ensemble recherche, Ascolta, ASKO|Schönberg, EnsembleKollektiv Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and many more. Yaron Deutsch, Stephane Ginsburgh, Rei Nakamura, Ning Yu, Florentin Ginot, Severine Ballon, Tom Pauwels, Matthias Koole, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Sarah Defrise have been among the soloists he has collaborated with.

 

Recordings of his works can be found on, amongst others, Sub Rosa, Kairos, Wergo and Neos.