Lennart Dohms - Biography  

Photo copyright: E. Neumann

Lennart Dohms is one of today’s leading conductors for contemporary music and also a recognized educator in the field of transdisciplinary music performance.

Born in Bonn, Lennart began his musical education at the Cologne Music School. After studying theatre science, theology and musicology he continued his musical studies at the Mozarteum Salzburg, the Conservatoire national Supérieur de Paris and the Hochschule für Musik Dresden, where he graduated with distinction. Transdisciplinary performance work as well as research that combines questions of contextualizing music and the politics of building communities is a driving force for his work within and outside of institutions.

Lennart is currently head of the master in music performance program at the Bern University of the Arts in Switzerland and founding member of the ensemble El Perro Andaluz based in Dresden, Germany.

In his function at the Bern University of the Arts, he has diversified the teaching staff and consequently built up a range of master programs in music that open up the notion of ‘music performance’. The field stretches from traditional chamber and solo music to artistic research, music in context, experimental and intensified transdisciplinary work. The challenge hereby remains the reconciliation of engagement in different types of communities with the necessity for sheltered spaces of artistic and experimental freedom. Supporting the discussions in cultural politics about these questions, he was an initiator of PAKT, a network for experimental music in Bern and a member the consulting panel for the restructuring of the Bern Musikfestival.

His own regular work with the Ensemble El Perro Andaluz mirrors these approaches in the field of freelance contemporary music. Founded in 2007 the Ensemble, who has won the ‘Kunstförderpreis Dresden’, is working in classical concert and festival frames but is mostly engaged in experimental work with partners from theater, dance and performance art as well as in community development. Thus El Perro Andaluz has been able to take part in the sociocultural initiative Zentralwerk Dresden where it opened a working and teaching space in 2016. Together with the Ensemble he is an initiating member of Klangnetz Dresden, a network for contemporary music, and member of FREO, a network of freelance ensembles.

Lennart has conducted orchestras and ensembles throughout Europe and has premiered over 250 new pieces ranging from chamber music to large-scale opera productions. Recently he has enjoyed working regularly with the Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain in La-Chaux-de-Fonds and the Ensemble Mosaik in Berlin. Next to his professorship at the Bern University of the Arts he has continued to guest teach internationally in cities such as Frankfurt, Oslo, York, Danzig, Seoul and Salzburg.

Lennart has been awarded the Arras-Prize for artistic work and a fellowship from the Akademie Musiktheater heute. The latter invited him to join its jury as did the Berlin Academy of the Arts in 2017. In 2018 Lennart was appointed a member of the Saxonian Academy of the Arts. He has collaborated and strongly been influenced by artists like Helmut Oehring, Joachim Schloemer, Helmut Lachenmann, Elizabeth Waterhouse, Barbara Lubich, Jens Heitjohann, Christian Grammel, Matthias Rebstock, Saskia Bladt and Manos Tsangaris.

Last Updated: 7/2022