Hans Thomalla

Background

DMA, Stanford University

Hans Thomalla is a German-American composer based in Chicago. 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 most recent work for the stage, Dark Spring, was premiered at the Mannheim Opera in 2020.

Thomalla is Professor of Music Composition at Northwestern University, where he founded 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. From 1999-2002 he held the position of Assistant Dramaturge and Musical Advisor at the Stuttgart Opera. He has taught at June in Buffalo and the Freiburg Matrix Academy, and has served on the faculty of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse for several years.

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, and in 2020-21 he was a fellow at the Kaplan Humanities Institute at Northwestern University.

Hans Thomalla 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.”

For more information, visit Hans Thomalla's personal website.