The Ensemble Apparat, which focuses on brass instruments in the context of New Music and Sound Art, will be performing at Villa Aurora. It will play compositions by Michelle Lou (San Diego) and Mattie Barbier (Los Angeles) as well as former Villa Aurora Fellows Hanna Hartmann and Stefan Beyer.

Admission is free, please RSVP here.

Stefan Beyer is a Berlin-based composer of experimental music.
Born in Braunschweig, he studied composition, music and history in Leipzig and Gothenburg, Sweden. International appearances, e.g. with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra or the Ensemble Modern, as well as radio broadcasts on Deutschlandfunk Kultur and hr2 followed. Beyer has also received scholarships and grants from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and was a fellow at the artist residencies Villa Aurora, U.S.A., and the Cité internationale des Arts, Paris. From 2011 to 2013, he taught contemporary orchestration at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music in Leipzig. He is a permanent contributor to the journal Musik & Ästhetik and chairman of the association for contemporary music and literature forma Leipzig e. V. Beyer is currently working on a new work for orchestra with the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra 2025/26.

Michelle Lou is a composer, performer and sound artist who works mainly in the field of electroacoustic music, both in hardware and in computer based forms. She has also created large scale sound installations which are often performative and collaborative. Her work has been presented at Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the Festival of New American Music and Kammer Klang in London. She received degrees in double bass performance and music composition from UC San Diego with additional studies at The Conservatorio G. Nicolini in Piacenza, Italy (double bass) and The UDK in Graz, Austria (composition), the latter on a Fulbright Fellowship. Graduate studies culminated in a doctorate in composition from Stanford University. Michelle Lou was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and an Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She has taught at the WasteLAnd Summer Composition Course, at the Academy for Neue Music in Boswil, Switzerland, and as a guest lecturer at Dartmouth College. Michelle Lou is currently a guest lecturer in composition and electronic music at UC Santa Cruz.

The focus of Ensemble Apparat is on expanding the horizons of brass instruments in the context of new music and sound art. The members of Ensemble Apparat - Mathilde Conley and Paul Hübner (trumpet), Samuel Stoll (horn), Weston Olencki (trombone), and Max Murray (tuba) - have already gained extensive experience in renowned New Music ensembles (including Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, MusikFabrik Köln, Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Tzara), played at the most important festivals on the scene (Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wittener Tage für Neue Musik, Huddersfield New Music Festival, Warschauer Herbst, Wien Modern) and participated in important academies (Ensemble Modern Akademie, Lucerne Festival Akademie, Impuls Graz and Darmstädter Tage für Neue Musik). Since then, they have worked with numerous composers to try out a wide variety of styles and approaches in premieres of solo and ensemble works. This wealth of experience only comes together in Ensemble Apparat.

In recent years, the ensemble has presented programs at the rainy days festival of the Philharmonie Luxembourg, at the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and at the Klangwerkstatt Berlin festival. As part of the Ensemblekollektiv Berlin, Ensemble Apparat has performed at many important Berlin festivals for contemporary music, including Musikfest and MärzMusik of the Berliner Festspiele and Ultraschall.