Björn Gottstein

Björn Gottstein was born in Aachen, Germany, in 1967 and is a radio producer for New Music for the public broadcasting channel SWR in Stuttgart. Since 2015, he is the head of the Donaueschingen Festival. Having initially trained as a bookseller, he went on to study Musicology, German Philology and Political Economy in Cologne. He wrote reviews for the “taz”-newspaper and published texts and reviews in the journals “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik”, “positionen”, the “Musik-Texte” of the magazine “Spex” as well as international publications such as “Frieze” (London), “Dissonanz” (Basel), “Parergon” (Oslo) and “Nutida Musik” (Stockholm). Between 2000 and 2014, he moderated the programme “Studio elektronische Musik” at Westdeutscher Rundfunk. He curated the conference “Audio Poverty – Music and Poverty” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2009, “Lux Aeterna” at Berghain in 2011 and the festival “faithful!” in 2012. Björn Gottstein has taught at TU Berlin, Darmstadt Summer School for New Music, Basel School of Music and the Berlin University of the Arts. From 2009 to 2013, he was the chairman of Initiative Neue Musik Berlin and from 2013/14, he was one of the artistic directors of the Eclat Festival in Stuttgart and the SWR concert series Attacca.

As of February 2018