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The German composer and music journalist, Alexander Keuk, received training in singing, piano, bassoon and music theory. After high school, teaching and civil service (1990-1992), he studied from 1993 to 1999 composition at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden in the class of Professor Hans Jürgen Wenzel. He graduated with a thesis on The 7 Sonatas for 2 Violins by Allan Pettersson. This was followed by two-year postgraduate studies (among others with Wilfried Krätzschmar) in composition at the same institute, which he completed in 2001 with concert exams. In addition to studying, he was since 1996 freelance editor of the arts department of the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten.
Since 2002, Alexander Keuk works in Dresden as a freelance composer and music journalist. He is a regular contributor to the Neue Musikzeitung, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and the Fachmagazin Positionen. From 2001 to 2003 he was managing director of the Sächsischen Gesellschaft für Neue Musik; since 1992 he is on the board of the Internationalen Allan-Pettersson-Gesellschaft and until 2017 he was chairman of the Dresdner Kammerchor (Director: Hans-Christoph Rademann), of which he is also a member as a baritone singer. In 1999 he was a scholarship holder of the Sächsischen Kulturstiftung and the Sächsischen Musikrates at Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf. In 2004 and 2010 he received a working scholarship from the Free State of Saxony.
Alexander Keuk performed in Dresden through performances with dancers and visual artists as well as conducting and has been working since 1996 as a music journalist. His catalog contains about sixty compositions of instrumental, vocal and scenic genres. He has collaborated with authors such as Wolfgang Willaschek, Sabine Bergk and Hans Thill and has composed texts by Alexander Pushkin, Georg Heym, Peter Altenberg and Paul Valéry. In 2003, his children's opera Dr. OX V5.1 after Jules Verne was premiered. For the 800th anniversary of the city of Dresden in 2006, the city of Dresden and the Dresdner Philharmonie commissioned from him a composition of an orchestral work. The work, Mehr Licht!, was premiered in May 2006 by the Dresdner Philharmonie under the baton of Peter Gülke in a cycle concert of the orchestra. In 2009, he participated with a new dubbing of Wilhelm Müller's Vineta at the 1st International Choir Workshop of the Dresdner Kammerchor. In 2012, he wrote the orchestral work Time Blast for the 20th anniversary of the Landesjugendorchesters Sachsen. In 2013, his Doppelkonzert für 2 Violinen und Orchester was premiered by the Mittelsächsischen Philharmonie. He wrote for ensembles such as Ensemble Courage and Sinfonietta Dresden, for instrumental soloists such as Nils Mönkemeyer and Matthias Lorenz or the singers Anna Korondi and Elisabeth Holmer. His works have been played at "Jugend Musiziert", at the Weimarer Frühjahrstagen für Zeitgenössische Musik and at the LINK-Festival for New Music in Stockholm and broadcast or produced by broadcasters of the ARD-Institutions and the Czech Radio.
In cooperation with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the European Center for the Arts Hellerau and the Carrousel Theater, a music theater for children was created in 2003. For several years, he also worked with students on composition projects at Dresden schools.
Alexander Keuk lives in Dresden, where he also works as a chorister in addition to composing, and online in the features section and print as a music journalist. |
