ensemble | vitae |  cds |  contact

Vitae

Stephanie Haas studied at the Stuttgart Academy of Music und  Performing Arts with Konrad Richter, Helmut Lachenmann and Ellinor Junker-Giesen. In the 1990s she concentrated mainly on works by composers that were banned by fascism (in 1991 she gave the first worlwide performance of Gideon Klein's Lieder op.1). Stephanie Haas lives an intensive collaboration with contemporary composers, who are writing for her. In 1997 she sang the first performance of Sofia Gubaidulina's "From the Visions of Hildegard von Bingen". From there she found her way to the composer Hildegard von Bingen. Accompanied by one of the best connaisseurs of Hildegards music, the musicologist Dr. Barbara Stühlmeyer, Stephanie Haas has become one of the most important singers of the songs of Hildegard of Bingen. Her interpretation of Hildegard's songs derives from intensive study of the handwritten sources and great sensitivity for the relationship between the text and musical phrasing.

Christoph Haas was brought up with classical music. From  1961-1965 he sang with the "Stuttgart Hymnus", a famous boy's choir. 1966 he started to play the drums. Since the 1980s he went on to study the great rhythm cultures of the world in West Africa, Latin America and Southern India. As a solo percussionist he developed extensive international concert activities. He developed innovative techniques on the Persian-Indian long-necked lute tambura. His compositions for percussion solo and chamber music are characterised by multilayered polyrhythmics, often in odd time metres and with a sophisticated handling of timbre and harmonics.