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Thomas Schäfer
Director of IMD and Artistic Director of the Darmstadt Summer Course

Dr Thomas Schäfer, born in 1967 in Hamburg, is Director of the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD) and Artistic Director of the Darmstadt Summer Course. At the University of Hamburg (UHH) he studied Historical and Systematic Musicology, Modern German Literature and Philosophy. He is co-founder of the “Working Group for Music in Exile” at the Musicological Institute of the UHH. In 1997 he received his doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin with a thesis about the compositional influence of Gustav Mahler in contemporary music. From 2000 to 2008 Thomas Schäfer was dramaturge for contemporary music at the Wiener Konzerthaus and curator of the “Wien Modern” festival.