Alexander Schubert

Alexander Schubert was born in Bremen. He studied Bioinformatics in Leipzig, then spent a year at the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe at the Institute of Music and Acoustics.^[4] He received a doctorate in multimedia composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, studying under Georg Hajdu and Manfred Stahnke.^[5] He teaches at the Musikhochschule Hamburg,^[6] directs the electronic studio at Musikhochschule Lübeck^[7] and has been a visiting lecturer at Darmstadt International Summer Courses.^[8] A founding member of ensembles Decoder, Trnn, Schubert-Kettlitz-Schwerdt, and Ember, he has also pursued an experimental pop music solo project under the name Sinebag.^[9]

Schubert's pieces have been performed at several international institutions, including Wien Modern,^[10][11][12] ICMC,^[13] SMC,^[14] Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival,^[15] DLF Forum neuer Musik,^[16][17] IRCAM,^[18][19][20] ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival,^[21][22] and Blurred Edges in Hamburg.^[23]

Jennifer Walshe, Matthew Shlomowitz and Zubin Kanga have situated Schubert within what Walshe terms "The New Discipline" of contemporary music, alongside such composers as James Saunders and François Sarhan.^[24][25] Shlomowitz writes,

The remit of New Music has moved on and broadened out in the twenty-first century. Composers such as Joanna Bailie, Michael Beil, Johannes Kreidler and Jennifer Walshe have created work that: engages popular and everyday culture; develops historical ideas from the visual arts (e.g. conceptualism); utilises technology to create new musical instruments; combines field recordings with music to form new relationships between music and the world; and establishes a music-led interdisciplinary practice with multimedia and theatricalised works. Whilst evidently connected to each of these trends, Alexander Schubert's work is a distinctive voice within this milieu.^[26]

Schubert's music makes extensive use of multimedia, including live video, internet-sourced content, lighting, and motion sensors.^[27][28] Praised by some commentators for its fusion of avant-garde and pop styles,^[29][30] immersive qualities,^[31][32] and distinctive engagement with the internet,^[33][34] Schubert's critics have found his work excessively confrontational^[35] or conceptual.^[36]

In 2024, Schubert releases the album Angel Death Traps in collaboration with Copenhagen-based contemporary music ensemble NEKO3.^[37]

In 2009, Schubert won the Bourges Residency Prize, and his piece Nachtschatten (Nightshade) placed in the Canadian Electroacoustic Community "Jeu de temps" competition.^[38] He won the European Conference of Promoters of New Music competition in 2012^[39] and a Giga-Hertz Production Award in 2013.^[40] Wiki-Piano.Net received an honorary mention in the 2019 Prix Ars Electronica.^[41]

Schubert has published articles on virtuality, post-digitality and multimedia composition. A collection of texts can be found in his book Switching Worlds.