Salome Kammer
Salome Kammer’s talent transcends musical boundaries. Her repertoire defies categorisation and is comprised of a mix of avant-garde music, virtuoso voice experiments, classical melodrama, lieder recitals, dada poetry and Broadway songs. Whether performing as a singing actress or as an acting singer, Kammer’s stage presence in musical cabaret and theatre roles is fascinating. Numerous contemporary music works have been dedicated to and premiered by her, both nationally and internationally. Composers such as Helmut Oehring, Wolfgang Rihm, Georges Aperghis, Bernhard Lang, Isabel Mundry, Mauricio Sotelo and Carola Bauckholt have dedicated works to her, inspired by the manifold facets of her voice and her exceptional expressiveness.
Salome Kammer studied music from 1977 to 1984, majoring in cello and studying with Maria Kliegel and Janos Starker in Essen. In 1983, she was engaged at the Heidelberg Theatre appearing in countless plays, musicals, and operettas. In 1988, she moved to Munich to begin filming “Die zweite Heimat” with director Edgar Reitz. While working on this monumental film project, she began her formal vocal training, taking lessons from teachers such as Yaron Windmüller. She has been performing as a vocal soloist in contemporary music concerts since 1990. “Heimat 3” which was premiered in Venice in 2004 and broadcast throughout Europe, also allowed her to exhibit the breadth of her abilities in the role of Clarissa.
Her wide-ranging repertoire includes classics of modern music such as Arnold Schönberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” and String Quartet No. 2, “La fabricca illuminata” by Nono, works by composers such as John Cage, Luciano Berio and Hans Zender as well as Lieder by Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Salome Kammer’s expertise in interpreting Weill’s and Schönberg’s music has resulted in invitations to appear at the Rheingau Music Festival, Kurt Weill Fest Dessau and Beethovenfest Bonn. In addition, she has a passion for musical cabaret and has performed a wide range of “Chansons bizarres” together with the composer and pianist Peter Ludwig in front of enthusiastic audiences on the most diverse cabaret stages in Germany.
Salome Kammer has wowed audiences in numerous productions of new operas including Helmut Lachenmann’s “Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern” at the Stuttgart Opera and the Opéra National de Paris, Jörg Widmann’s “Das Gesicht im Spiegel” at the Bavarian State Opera, and Isabel Mundry’s “Die Odyssee – Ein Atemzug” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She sang in Peter Eötvös’s “Lady Sarashina” at the Opéra national de Lyon, Opéra Comique Paris and Polish National Opera in Warsaw to great critical acclaim, as well as in Ligeti’s “Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures” in Munich. She has performed a staged version of Kurtág’s “Kafka Fragments” with violinist Carolin Widmann internationally many times. She gave her debut at the Berlin State Opera/Schillertheater in Brice Pauset’s solo work “Exercices du Silence” in 2011 and sang the role of Elsa in Sciarrino’s chamber opera “Lohengrin” at several theatres in 2014.
Numerous radio and CD productions document Salome Kammer’s exceptional talent, among them a recording of Schönberg’s “Jakobsleiter” (Harmonia Mundi) as well as Lachenmann’s “Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern” (Kairos). Her latest CDs “I hate music, but I like to sing” (Capriccio), “salomix-max” (wergo) and “I’m a Stranger Here Myself” (Capriccio), all chronicle the results of her long-standing collaboration with the pianist Rudi Spring and received rave reviews. In the current season, Salome Kammer has been invited to the Lucerne Festival to perform Schönberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” and Walton’s “Façade” with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, as well as to the Warsaw Autumn, Teatro Real Madrid and Tonhalle Zürich among others.
Salome Kammer teaches Contemporary Music for Voice at the Munich Conservatory. She is laureate of the Schneider Schott Music Prize and the Schwabinger Kunstpreis and has been honoured with the Magister Artium Gandensis from Ghent University.
As of January 2016