Hans Thomalla

Hans Thomalla, is a German-American composer. He has written chamber music as well as orchestral works and a particular focus of his activity lies in composing for the stage. His opera “Fremd” was produced by the Stuttgart Opera in 2011 and his second opera “Kaspar Hauser” by the Freiburg Opera in 2016. His new opera, Dark Spring, commissioned by the Mannheim Opera, will be produced in June 2020.

Thomalla is Professor of Music Composition at Northwestern University, where he founded and directs the Institute for New Music. He studied at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule and received his doctoral degree in composition from Stanford University, where he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. He has taught at June in Buffalo and the Freiburg Matrix Academy.

Thomalla has been awarded numerous awards and fellowships, including the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis, the Composer Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, the Christoph-Delz Prize, a Fromm Commission, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. During the academic year 2014/15 he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Thomalla has a son and a daughter, and he lives with his partner Sianne Ngai in Chicago. He appears as a fictional character in Alexander Kluge’s story collection „Wer ein Wort des Trostes spricht, ist ein Verräter. 48 Geschichten für Fritz Bauer“.

In 2004 Hans Thomalla was awarded the Kranichsteiner Music Prize. Since then he has taught composition several times at the Darmstadt Summer Course, most recently in 2014 and 2021, now again in 2023.