Mike Svoboda

• trombone player and composer Mike Svoboda grew up in Chicago and came to Germany with the help of a BMI Award to Young Composers in 1982
• worked for eleven years with Karlheinz Stockhausen during the 80s and 90s
• has premiered over 400 works for trombone at festivals throughout the world
• returned to composition only after ending his work with Stockhausen
• composes across the borders between popular and classical music, high culture and entertainment, combining - through the use of text and various musical styles - both traditional and avant-garde
• has received commissions from festivals and opera houses such as the ECLAT festival Stuttgart, The State Opera Hannover, The National Theater Mannheim and the State Opera in Stuttgart
• major festivals have invited him to be artist or composer-in-residence
• often is involved in his works as a soloist or with his own Mike Svoboda Ensemble
• numerous CDs, mainly for the WERGO label, document his art both as an interpreter and composer
• was awarded the Praetorius Prize for Innovation in Music from the German government in 2008

Works by Mike Svoboda include:
Play (2021) for orchestra
Once Around the World (2016) for narrator, grammophone, film and musicicans
Erwin, das Naturtalet (2005) Music theatre for everyone aged 6 and up
Love Hurts – Carmen Remix (2003) for trombone and orchestra

Looking Ahead: WP of new opera, Adam and Eve, Libretto by Anne-May Krüger (Schwetzingen, May 2025)

"Svoboda’s music has reached a point of maturity, a coming of age in which the rhythmic vitality, the masterful integration of eclectic sources to arrive at a personal style, the instinct for expressive virtuosity, dramatic development and the sensitive melding of color, line and harmony are all in place." – Scott Roller

Please also visit Mike Svoboda’s website at www.mikesvoboda.net