Sven-Ingo Koch was born near Cologne in Germany, in 1974 and studied composition, electronic composition, piano and musicology in Essen (Germany), San Diego and Stanford (USA). Among his teachers were Nicolaus A. Huber, Roger Reynolds and Brian Ferneyhough whose assistant he was in 2003. Also influential to Sven-Ingo Koch were the years he – due to these studies - spent in the USA (between 1999 and 2003) and the environments and the life he could observe there in California.
Now – after some residencies in France and Italy - again living in Germany (but quite missing the deserts and beaches of the American West Coast) Koch’s music is performed frequently at numerous festivals worldwide (such as the Munich Biennale, the Lyon Biennale, the festivals Eclat, Ultraschall, Musica Viva, the MDR Music Summer, the Dresden New Music Days etc.) and was selected among other venues to the World New Music Days 2004 in Lucerne, Switzerland and the Gaudeamus New Music Week in Amsterdam 2005. In 2007 Sven-Ingo Koch was Composer in Residence of the Rencontres Musicales de Haute Provence.
Being performed by orchestras such as the Radio Symphony Orchestra of the SWR, the Symphony Orchester of the Bavarian Radio and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra Sven-Ingo Kochs music also is frequently interpreted by internationally reknown soloists such as Chen Halevi, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Peter Veale, Pascal Gallois or James Avery, and by ensembles such as the musikFabrik, the Ensemble Modern, the Neue Vocalsolisten, the Nouvelle Ensemble Modern, the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin or the Nederlands Vocaal Laboratorium. In collaboration with the Ensemble Ascolta he composed new music to some abstract experimental films of the 1920s by Walter Ruttmann, which have been shown several times on German and French television channels. Sven-Ingo Koch received among other prizes the Folkwang Prize 1999, the third Bach Prize Hannover 2000, the Cynet Art honorary mention 2001, the German Industry Federation’s Young Composers Prize 2001, the prestigious Stuttgart Award 2003 and the Düsseldorf Music Prize 2006 - as well as honors of the Aeolian Trio Prize 2004, the Elisabeth-Schneider-Prize 2005, the Prize of the Weimarer Frühjahrstage 2006 and the Prize of the Dresdener piano trio competition 2006. Sven-Ingo Koch, furthermore, obtained scholarships of the German Government (DAAD) (1999-2000), the Stanford University (2000-2003), the Academy of Arts Berlin (in 2000 and 2002), GRAME, Lyon 2003, the Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung 2004, Künstlerhof Schreyahn 2005, Schloss Solitude 2007 and last but not least a scholarship from the German secretary of cultural affairs to live in Venice in 2008. In 2008 he will also be visiting artist at the ZKM.
In 2009 the WERGO label released a CD with Koch's larger works for orchestra and ensembles (Edition zeitgenössische Musik in Deutschland).
© Astrid Ackermann