About

For more than three decades, Athens-born composer, conductor and university professor Konstantia Gourzi has shaped contemporary music with a distinctive musical language. Her works emerge from silence and a sense of centeredness, unfolding a dramatic intensity that aims not at volume, but at depth. For Gourzi, composition and conducting are two inseparably connected forms of expression.

Her repertoire encompasses works for orchestra, chamber ensembles and solo instruments, as well as music theatre and film music. Social questions, spiritual impulses and the connection with nature play a central role in her work. Her music moves between complexity and clarity, inner strength and poetic restraint.

Her musical education began in Athens and continued at what is now the Berlin University of the Arts. Particularly formative was her close collaboration with György Kurtág (1991–1996). She received further important impulses from composers including Isang Yun, Hans Werner Henze, Sofia Gubaidulina and Péter Eötvös. As a conductor, she assisted Claudio Abbado at the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1995 and was further influenced by Carlos Kleiber, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Michael Gielen.

Since 1991, she has founded and directed various ensembles, including attacca berlin, Echo Ensemble, ensemble oktopus and opus21musikplus. From 1999 to 2007, she headed the Department of New Music at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin. Since 2002, she has been Professor of New Music Ensemble at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich.

Her works are performed and commissioned worldwide by renowned institutions, festivals and orchestras, including the Bavarian State Opera, the BBC, the Biennale di Venezia, the Lucerne Festival, the Grafenegg Festival, Ultraschall Berlin, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Bamberg Symphony, the DSO Berlin, the Bremen Philharmonic and the RSO Wien. She regularly composes for soloists including Nils Mönkemeyer, François Leleux, Dorothee Oberlinger, Julian Prégardien, Anastasia Kobekina and William Youn, as well as for ensembles such as Munich Opera Horns, the Minguet Quartet and the Meitar Ensemble.

Her discography comprises more than 30 releases on labels including ECM, GENUIN, NEOS and Sony Classical. In 2023, she received the Opus Klassik award for her complete body of work in the category “Composer of the Year”. Her album Whispers has reached more than 50 million streams on Spotify and Apple Music.

As a Composer or Artist in Residence, she has been invited to festivals including Grafenegg, Kreisau, Molyvos and the Romberg Festival, as well as by the Bremen Philharmonic. In 2026, the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz dedicated a composer portrait to her.

In the 2026/27 season, numerous performances and world premieres of her works are scheduled internationally, including commissioned works for institutions such as the Bavarian State Opera, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Munich Opera Horns and the Dresden Music Festival. In autumn, Logos, a new album bringing together her first three orchestral works, will be released.

Dr. Susanna Schulz, September 2026