Sarah Maria Sun
Sarah Maria Sun began singing at the age of ten. She studied first in Cologne and Stuttgart and then continued her studies with Darinka Segota and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner.
Mainly performing 16th to 21st Century music, but specializing in the music of today, she has performed with conductors like Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Thomas Hengelbrock and Christoph Spering, orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, ensembles such as Ensemble Musikfabrik Köln, Ascolta, Ensemble Modern, Les Percussion de Strasbourg, Ensemble Recherche, Sinfonietta Leipzig and Ensemble 2e2m and string quartets as the Arditti, Diotima, Aron and Minguet. She performs in places like Muziekgebow Amsterdam, Zürcher Tonhalle, Auditorio National Madrid, Enescu Festival, Konzerthaus Berlin, Philharmonie of Berlin and Cologne, Biennale Paris, Venedig and München, Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen, Arnold Schönberg Center Wien, festivals in Witten, Donaueschingen, Salzburg and many more.
Besides lied, opera and oratorio her repertoire includes more than 600 pieces from the contemporary repertoire. She appeared at the opera houses of Berlin, Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Basel, Dresden and Paris.
From 2007-2014 she has been the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart. For almost 30 years this extraordinary ensemble has been at the forefront of contemporary music and has worked closely with composers to explore and expand vocal techniques within new vocal music and music theatre. This ensemble is greatly respected and has performed worldwide.
Besides numerous radio recordings she recorded CDs for the Labels Sony (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: “Die Israeliten in der Wüste”, award of spanish record-critics), TESTKLANG (Lied-Cycles by Arnold Schönberg, Johannes Schöllhorn, Hanns Eisler, Luc Ferrari), Hänssler Profil (John Dowland), NEOS (Hans Thomalla), Col Legno (Zeynep Gedizlioglou, John Zorn, Luis Codera Puzo), Tzadik (John Zorn), Kairos (Alberto Posadas), Ensemble Modern Medien (Arnulf Herrmann).
With Neue Vocalsolisten she recorded CDs for Col Legno (Award for Georges Aperghis “Wölfli-Kantate”), cypres, musiques suisses (Award for Oscar Bianchis “Matra”) and many other Labels. The project “Escalier du chant” by Olaf Nicolai is available at Spector Books.
In 2014 she performed in new operas by Rolf Riehm (Frankfurt), Nikolaus Brass (Biennale Munich) and Dieter Schnebel (Biennale Munich). Besides she has given concerts with the Arditti Quartet in Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, at the festival Novembermusic in s’Hertogenbosch and in Japan. In Tokyo she sang the Messiaen-cycle “Harawi” with the pianist Ken’ichi Nakagawa and in the Mito Tower concert Hall she sang Arnold Schönberg’s 2nd string quartet with the Arditti Quartet. In 2013 she had been in the Suntory concert Hall with the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, performing Sciarrino’s “12 Madrigali”.
Sarah Maria Sun has given master classes for vocal music of the 20th and 21st century at the universities of Harvard, Chicago, Stockholm, Zurich, Rostock, Moscow, Hanover and Berlin.
As of January 2016