Life

Dietmar Bonnen studied music and fine arts in Cologne and Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

. In 1981 he founded the avantgarde-rock ensemble Fleisch, with whom he recorded several CDs with his own compositions. After two years of production he published a CD called “Bonnen spielt …” with organ music of the 20th century. This production was the first, which combined different organs and acoustics from different churches made possible by recording techniques taken from pop music. Beside works of György Ligeti

György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

, Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

, Charles Ives

Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

 and Max Reger

Max Reger

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...

, he also played compositions written especially for this project and that cannot be performed on conventional organs. It contains premieres of two works of John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

; “Solo with Obbligato Accompaniment of Two Voices in Canon, and Six Short Inventions on the Subjects of the Solo” from 1933/34 and “Composition for Three Voices” from 1934.

Later, Bonnen produced several CDs in several different musical genres, as for example the soundscape-composition “Bonnen in Beijing”, recorded 1993/94 for WDR in Beijing and Cologne. Other works present music of other composers in new arrangements. Examples are CDs with music of Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

, Hildegard von Bingen, Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

, Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

, Willie Dixon

Willie Dixon

William James "Willie" Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the Upright bass and the guitar, as well as his own singing voice, Dixon is arguably best known as one of the most prolific songwriters...

 and Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...

.

Concerts in Europe, Asia, South America and especially Russia led to intensive collaborations with foreign artists and to the foundation of the “Russian-German Composers Quartet” with Alexei Aigui and Ivan Glebovich Sokolov

Ivan Glebovich Sokolov

Ivan Glebovich Sokolov is a Russian-born composer and pianist, currently living in Germany.After graduating from Moscow Conservatory in the early 80s, he taught composition and orchestral score reading there, while also promoting new music in concerts in and around Moscow...

 from Moscow, Manfred Niehaus and Dietmar Bonnen from Cologne.

Bonnen is the director of the chamber choir

Chamber choir

A chamber choir or group of chamber singers is the choral equivalent of a chamber ensemble, using voices instead of instruments. This prestigious choir will usually consist of 20-40 elite and dedicated singers. Several chamber choir formats exist, ranging from barbershop groups to exclusively...

 Les Saxosythes.

He has more than 50 CD productions in different musical genres, composition commissions for different broadcasting companies, theatres etc. to his name.

Important for his own composing are the works of Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

, Jimi Hendrix, Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...

, Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...

 and John Cage, whose pieces can be found in many of Bonnen's productions.

Compositions (selection)

Die Nachtwache (concert for accordion and string orchestra)

Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

 (Peking-soundscape)

Muspilli

Muspilli

Muspilli is one of but two surviving pieces of Old High German epic poetry , dating to around 870. One large fragment of the text has survived in the margins and empty pages of a codex marked as the possession of Louis the German and now in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . The beginning and end of...

 (composition for choir and organ)

Algarabia (composition for soprano and choir)

Adagio (composition for keyboards)

Gazimagusa (composition for electronics and piano)

Knäuel (composition for trumpet, guitar and electronics)

Quatuor plus 2 (composition for 3 drums, organ, clarinet and guitar)

Die Wolke des Vergessens (composition for ensemble)

Ouroboros

Ouroboros

The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The name originates from within Greek language; οὐρά meaning "tail" and βόρος meaning "eating", thus "he who eats the tail"....

 (composition for 3 drums, electronics and clarinet)

i.m.J.C. (composition for electronics)

Blau

Blau

Blau may refer to:* blue in German and Catalan * Blau , a tributary of the Danube in Germany* Prussian blue , a very dark blue pigment...

 (cycle for piano)

Früher, als wir die großen Ströme noch … (suite for speaker and ensemble) with Peter Rühmkorf

Peter Rühmkorf

Peter Rühmkorf was a German writer who significantly influenced German post-war literature....

 and Andreas Schilling

Archangelos

Archangelos

Archangelos is a town and a former municipality on the island of Rhodes, in the Dodecanese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Rhodes, of which it is a municipal unit.-Location and population:...

, Rodini, Solovki

Solovki

The Solovki prison camp was located on the Solovetsky Islands, in the White Sea). It was the "mother of the GULAG" according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn...

 (graphic compositions)

Ben und seine Freunde im Konzert (cycle for sound sculptures) with Peter Hölscher and Andreas Schilling

bukhara

Bukhara

Bukhara , from the Soghdian βuxārak , is the capital of the Bukhara Province of Uzbekistan. The nation's fifth-largest city, it has a population of 263,400 . The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time...

 (composition for doublebass, prepared piano and viola) with Andreas Schilling

Thai (ambient composition for double bass, percussion, piano and soundscape)

Ryoan-ji

Ryoan-ji

is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. Belonging to the Myoshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism, the temple and karesansui garden is one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, a UNESCO World Heritage Site....

 (composition for 5 melody instruments and percussion)

Medea

Medea

Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...

(composition for 3 violoncelli, 3 electric guitars, percussion and electronics)

Chronotopia (composition for ensemble)

archet-en-ciel (composition for violoncello and electronics)

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