About Sprechbohrer

Sigrid Sachse, Harald Muenz, Georg Sachse who form the sprechbohrer trio have dedicated themselves intensively, since the founding of the ensemble in 2004, to perform „spoken art” from the border area between music, phonetics, and literature under a musical perspective; indeed, all three members are trained musicians. Georg Sachse and Harald Muenz, also research active at University level in Cologne and London respectively, are concerned with artistic, scientific, and pedagogical issues in their fields. The broad experience of the ensemble’s members in the areas of composition, interpretation, literature, and phonetics come together in the work of the sprechbohrer and combine in a unique boundary-crossing approach. A particular concern of the three musicians is collaborating with living authors and composers for creating new works. Already in their first concert, the sprechbohrer program featured new pieces of their own next to a work by the Berlin composer, Stefan Streich. Since then, Gerhard Rühm, Georg Heike, Peter Behrendsen, and Hans Peter Reutter have written new pieces, with more projects to come.

The sprechbohrer repertoire includes, in addition to their own compositions, works by Kurt Schwitters, Dieter Schnebel, Gerhard Rühm, Oskar Pastior, Tom Johnson, John Cage. In 2010, sprechbohrer realised the 90-minute first integral performance of Hans G Helms’s legendary Fa:m’ Ahniesgwow in the presence of the author who also authorised their first recording of the entire work by Frankfurt public radio hr2 kultur. This production has also been released on Wergo and won the independent quaterly German Record Critics' Award (3/2011); London’s The Wire listed the recording among their “Top 10 picks 2011”. Rainer Nonnenmann wrote in the newspaper, Kölner Stadt- Anzeiger, “The, in the best sense of the word, remarkable representation shone through capricious solo passages and a virtuoso madrigal technique. … Altogether, a much talked (about) presentation of these new language tools.” Torsten Möller praised the sprechbohrer, saying, “… wonderfully  prepared, lively, and at the same time virtuoso interpretations of works by significant Cologne artists.”

www.sprechbohrer.de