There’s a lot going on in Austria’s contemporary music scene. Mainly responsible for this development is a new generation of composers, who expand the spectrum of contemporary music with many never-before-heard facets. This time in the series “Austria’s Young Composers”, mica – music austria portrays the Viennese composer Veronika Mayer.
Fast Facts
The musician and composer Veronika Mayer was born in 1977 in Vienna. At the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, she studied piano with Jochen Köhler, computer music and electronic media with Germán ToroPérez, composition with Detlev Müller Siemens and electroacoustic composition with Karlheinz Essl. Her compositions include instrumental and electroacoustic works, sound installations and improvisations with live electronics.
She received commissions of the Festival Wien Modern, the Vienna Jeunesse, the Platypus Association, the festival „Das kleine Symposion“ and the Institute of Public Art in Styria. She is a member of the network “snim” (spontaneous network for improvised music).
Portrait
Veronika Mayer covers a wide range from instrumental compositions to electro-acoustics and improvised live electronics. This diversity is inspired by omnipresent sounds and everyday experiences, which she does not always take too seriously and sometimes has an ironic and humorous approach. With the combination of instruments, sound samples or acoustic objects with live electronics, she forms subtle tonal structures, always aware of transforming analog and digital elements into an inseparable unified sound. She also focuses on maintaining the genuineness and the rawness of the sounding materials, to explore them in their independent existence and to use its sonic extreme. As a member of the audiovisual trio „Bah vs. Liii supervice” and the electronic duo “SURE”, she also performs her sounds in the form of experimental live improvisations on stage.
Important Compositions
“ORGAN”
for organ
2010
“fivehundredseventytwowestonefourone (572 W 141)”
for soprano, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin and cello
Commissioned by the Festival Wien Modern 2009
“als…ob…”
for cello and live electronics
2009
“einmal, immer”
for 1 female and 1 male voice, flute and bassoon
2008
“s.m.s.o. (slow.motion.sound.objects.)”
object-oriented sound performance
The series s.m.s.o. uses empty glass bottles in combination with mini speakers as a resonance body and explores the slow formation and movement of sound and its subtle changes in different tonal and spatial constellations.