Mark Andre

Born in Paris in 1964 Mark Andre studied composition, counterpoint, harmony, analysis and musical research at the Conservatoire National Supérieure de Musique de Paris (CNSMP), where his teachers included Claude Ballif, Gérard Grisey and Helmut Lachenmann.

In 1993, after studying at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris (Ulm), and the Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours), he took a doctorate in musicology with a dissertation on “Le compossible musical de l'Ars subtilior.” He completed an Advanced degree (‘Großes Kompositionsexamen’) in composition with Helmut Lachenmann at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule on a scholarship from the French Foreign Ministry.

He held a Fellowship at the Schloss Solitude Academy, Stuttgart between 1995 and 1996 and was awarded a scholarship from the German Academic Exhange Service (DAAD) in 1996. In the same year he received the Kranichstein Music Prize for un-fini I and le loin et le profond from the Darmstadt Ferienkurse for New Music, where he also participated in a master class with Wolfgang Rihm. He was awarded a residency in Germany from the Villa Medici-hors-les-murs.

In 1997 Andre studied electronic music with André Richard at the Experimental Studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation, SWR (Freiburg). He won first prize at the Stuttgart International Composers’ Competition for Le Trou noir univers (1992-93) for orchestra, vocalists and live electronics. He was also awarded a scholarship by SWR and the City of Baden-Baden. Since 1997 Andre has taught counterpoint and orchestration at the Conservatoire National de Région de Strasbourg and the Frankfurt Musikhochschule.

In 1998 (and again in 2006 and 2010) Andre returned to the Darmstadt Ferienkurse as a tutor for compostition. Between 1998 and 2000 he held a Fellowship at Villa Medici, Rome and was a Fellowship holder at the Frankfurt Opera. He received the Internationaler Kompositionspreis from the Frankfurt Opera for …das O… (Part I of …22,13…), which was premiered by Ensemble Modern under Johannes Debus. He was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Foundation Förderpreis in 2002. …22,13… (Musiktheater Passion in drei Teilen) was written for the Munich Biennale and Mainz City Theatre and premiered in Munich, with Georges Delnon as stage director, on 20 May 2004. Further performances in Munich, Mainz and at the Festival d'Automne at the Opéra Bastille, Paris, followed.

Andre was invited to join the DAAD Artist Program in Berlin in 2005 and in 2006 received the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Composition Prize, the Giga Hertz Production Prize for electronic music, and was awarded the Orchestral prize from Donaueschingen Festival for …auf…III by the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg.

In 2008 Andre was awarded the Berlin Art Prize Förderpreis for Music by the Berlin Academy of Arts. The first complete performance of the cycle ...auf… (2005-7) was given in Berlin in 2009. Conceived as a triptych of three pieces, forming a unified whole, each piece is also intended to be able to stand alone in performance. In 2009 Andre was also made a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and appoint Professor of Composition at the Dresden Musikhochschule.

In addition to acting as tutor for composition at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse in 2010, Andre was also a tutor at the European Academy of Music Festival d'Aix en Provence and composer in residence and tutor at the 21st Takefu International Music Festival. Since 2010 he has been a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts.

The French Ministry of Culture appointed Andre ‘chevalier des arts et des lettre’ in 2011 and the following year he was Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin and composer in residence at the Salzburg Mozartwoche. He was also named an honorary member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. The same year he received the composition prize of the Gerhart and Renate Baum Foundation.

Mark Andre has written works commissioned by the Ensemble Modern, ensemble recherche, Trio Accanto, Klangforum Wien, KNM Berlin, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Ensemble Alternance, EIC, and others. He currently lives in Berlin.

He has received the Orchestra Prize of the SWR Sinfonieorchester for "über" for clarinet, orchestra and electronics (Donaueschinger Musiktage 2015), Jörg Widmann (clarinet), SWR SO cond. F. X. Roth, Experimentalstudio des SWR. 

2022 his work rwh 1 - 4 for orchestra, choirs and electronics has been performed at Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen (Hannover) and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg with Ensemble Modern and Ingo Metzmacher conducting.

2022/23 Mark Andre is composer in residence at Musikverein Wien. 

Mark Andre’s works are published by Edition Peters.