Ensemble KNM Berlin
The Ensemble KNM Berlin is part of the lively contemporary music scene in Berlin. Founded in 1988 by Juliane Klein, Thomas Bruns, and other students at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler school of music, the ensemble today consists of 10 musicians from Germany, Great Britain, and Switzerland. The ensemble presents compositions, concert installations, and concert projects created in close cooperation with composers, authors, conductors, artists, and stage directors from around the world. The programs reflect a curiosity to explore the unknown and a willingness to confront the most pressing themes of our times. Since its founding, the ensemble has performed in more than 1100 concerts.
KNM Berlin has earned an international reputation with repeated guest appearances at important music festivals, such as ars musica (Brussels), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Festival d’Automne (Paris), Les Musiques (Marseille), MaerzMusik (Berlin), musica Strasbourg, Reims Scène d’Europe, SettembreMusica (Torino), Ultraschall Berlin – Festival für neue Musik, Wiener Festwochen or Wien Modern, but also through their original productions, among them “HouseMusik”, “space+place”, “KNM New Music Spa”, “Clang Cut Book”, “The Photographer” or “Das Stereoskop der Einsamkeiten”. Concert tours have taken KNM to halls like Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Carnegie Hall (New York City), Wiener Konzerthaus, Santory Hall (Tokyo) or the National Concert Hall in Taipei.
In the 1990s, the ensemble was already exploring space in its musical, architectural and socio-historical implications. This approach continues until today: in the development of concert installations and projects that combine composed concerts and concert space into an artistic unity.
Since 2016, the ensemble has increasingly focused on intercultural musical interaction, whether in Argentina, India, Japan, Cambodia, Korea, Mexico, Peru or Taiwan. In particular, with its three-year project “Tunings of the World 2.0”, the ensemble addressed the question of how locally shaped musical identities change in a globally connected world.
The ensemble’s discography includes 17 CDs to date. In 2009, 2010 and 2021, the KNM Berlin was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
As of January 2023