CAROLA BAUCKHOLT MASTERCLASS 2025
INTERNATIONAL COMPOSITION MASTERCLASS
with
19 – 24 August 2025
TRENTO – ITALY
© Astrid Ackerman
Rules CAROLA BAUCKHOLT International Composition Masterclass 2025 – MotoContrario ensemble
MotoContrario organizes, within the Festival Contrasti 2025, an international composition masterclass held by Carola Bauckholt, acclaimed as one of the most significant authors in the contemporary musical creation panorama.
The masterclass is open to composers of all ages and nationalities and is scheduled along five days and includes:
- individual and collective composition classes,
- a public lecture held by Carola Bauckholt,
- five concerts held by Icarus vs Muzak, Collettivo_21, Duo Juliet Fraser-Hannah Weirich and Ensemble MotoContrario,
- reading session, by MotoContrario Ensemble, of the scores of the selected composers,
- final concert with students works by Ensemble MotoContrario
REGISTRATION RULES
EFFECTIVE STUDENTS (10 places): € 380*. The attendance fee includes individual and collective composition lessons and activities with Carola Bauckholt and all the activities included on the masterclass schedule. Instructions for registration as an effective student can be found at the bottom of the page.
*For attendance, each effective student is asked to join MotoContrario as associate member (subscription period: 1 year). We remind that MotoContrario is a regularly registered, apolitical, non-denominational and non-profit cultural association, whose sole purpose is the study and divulgation of contemporary music. The membership quote is included in the attendance fee for the masterclass.
AUDITORS: 70 €. Auditors are guaranteed access to all the events of the masterclass (including individual lessons for effective students) they wish to attend.
Classes and all the events will take place in TrentoLab Space, via Gianantonio Manci, 2 – 38122 – Trento – Italia.
To register for the selection as an effective student, the following documentation must be sent WITHIN 23:59 (UTC+2) OF 13 APRIL 2025.
- link to at least two (2) scores for different instrumentation (solo, chamber ensemble, big ensemble…) in pdf format uploaded online;
- link to the recordings of the scores (NOT mandatory);
- artistic and academic curriculum vitae
NB: The files will not be downloaded immediately, so it is essential that the links and the possibility of downloads remain active!
The documentation must be sent exclusively by filling in the Google Form at the following link:
https://forms.gle/JAY2V3tNVmLBqLee7
The selection, personally supervised by the guest teacher, will take place by 30 APRIL 2025.
All participants will be notified of the results by e-mail and at the same time will receive information for the payment of the registration fees which, under penalty of loss of place, will be completed by 8 days from confirmation.
Each candidate can choose to register as an effective student and, in case of non-selection, can consequently communicate the decision to participate as an auditor.
To participate as an auditor, an application for participation should be submitted to the email address:
by the day before the start of the activity in which you want to participate.
CAROLA BAUCKHOLT
Carola Bauckholt was born in Krefeld, Germany, in 1959.
© Regine Körner
After working at the Theater am Marienplatz (TAM), Krefeld for several years, she studied composition at the Musikhochschule Köln with Mauricio Kagel (1978 – 1984). She founded the Thürmchen Verlag (music publisher) along with Caspar Johannes Walter in 1985, and six years later they founded the Thürmchen Ensemble.
She has received numerous residencies and prizes such as the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Scholarship from the city of Cologne (1986), a residency at the Villa Massimo in Rome (1997), in 1998 she was designated the Artist of the Year by the State of North Rhine Westphalia, and she was selected to represent Germany at the World Music Days in Mexico City 1992, Copenhagen 1996, Seoul 1997 and in Zurich 2004. She has been invited to reside at the Villa I Tatti in Florence in 2021 and at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2022. In 2023 she was a portrait composer at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik and in 2024 she was presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble in a portrait concert in New York.
She has worked as a guest teacher in Santiago di Chile (2010 and 2014), Ostrava Czech Republic (2011 and 2013), Amsterdam (2012 and 2014), Krakow (2012), Zurich (2012), Apeldoorn (2013), Kiev (2013) Oslo (2014, 2015, 2024), Mexico City (2014), Monterrey (2015), London (2015), Moscow and Tchaikovsky City (2016), Valencia (2018), Barcelona (2018, 2021, 2025) Bludenz (2018, 2019), Haifa (2019) Chicago (2019, 2022), Luxembourg (2020), Graz (2021, 2025), Cambridge, Huddersfield, Scotland (2021), Los Angeles (2022), New York (2022), Stockholm (2022), Dresden (2023), (Oulu/Finland 2023), Glasgow (2024), Boswil (2024), Basel (2024, 2025), Tel Aviv (2024) and in Germany.
In 2013, she was elected as a member of Akademie der Künste in Berlin, from November 2021 on as the director of the music section. In 2015, she was appointed as professor of composition with focus on contemporary musictheatre at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz, Austria. In 2020, she was elected as a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.
A central theme of Bauckholt’s work is the examination of the phenomena of perception and understanding. Her compositions often blur the boundaries between visual arts, musical theater and concert music. She is especially fond of using noisy sounds, which are often produced by unconventional means (such as extended instrumental techniques or bringing everyday objects to the concert hall). It is important to note that these noises are not just part of some kind of a predetermined compositional structure, but rather they are carefully studied and left free to unfold and develop at their own pace lending the compositions their own unique rhythm.