Jennifer Hymer
Encyclopedia
Education
Jennifer Hymer was trained as a pianist for classical and contemporary music at the University of California at Berkeley and Mills CollegeMills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
studying with Bay Area pianist Julie Steinberg. She also studied privately with James Avery
James Avery (musician)
James Avery was an American classical pianist and conductor.He was born in Hutchinson, Kansas and studied at the University of Kansas, and then at Indiana University under Tibor Kozma. From 1967 to 1980 he taught at [University of Iowa ], and from 1980 until 2002 at the Hochschule für Musik...
and Bernhard Wambach and participated in summer courses at Szombathely
Szombathely
Szombathely is the 10th largest city in Hungary. It is the administrative centre of Vas county in the west of the country, located near the border with Austria...
, Darmstadt and Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
.
Career
In 1996, she co-founded the ensemble WireWorks in the German city of MünsterMünster
Münster is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also capital of the local government region Münsterland...
as well, in 2008, the Hymer-Fograscher piano duo, based in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany. Hymer is noted for her projects expanding the possibilities of piano playing by focussing on extended techniques (inside piano), the use of electronics as well as performance on miniature pianos such as the toy piano
Toy piano
The toy piano, also known as the kinderklavier , is a small piano-like musical instrument. The present form of the toy piano was invented in Philadelphia by a 17-year-old German immigrant named Albert Schoenhut. He worked as a repairman at Wanamaker's department store, repairing broken glass...
or the African thumb piano also known as kalimba or m'bira.
Her musical projects include the multimedia piano program Handscapes, Piano, Kalimba, Gadgets, Toy Piano, Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mantra for two pianos and electronics as well as Kalimba!Kontained for which she featured, for the first time in contemporary music, the kalimba as a solo instrument in a full evening program.
She has worked with numerous composers who have written pieces for her repertoire such as Alvin Curran
Alvin Curran
Composer Alvin Curran , is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds....
, Roberto Morales, Helmut Oehring
Helmut Oehring
Helmut Oehring is a German composer. He studied with Friedrich Goldmann and Georg Katzer at the Akademie der Künste. He was guest of the Villa Massimo....
, Peter Michael Hamel
Peter Michael Hamel
Peter Michael Hamel is a German composer. His works have been associated with the Minimalist style of composition, and in the late 1970s with the New Simplicity movement....
, Silvia Matheus, Hanna Kulenty
Hanna Kulenty
Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw and in Arnhem .- Musical education :...
, Maria de Alvear
Maria de Alvear
Maria de Alvear is a Spanish-German composer living in Germany who was born to Spanish father and German mother.-References:*- External links :* * *...
, Matthias Kaul, Manfred Stahnke
Manfred Stahnke
Manfred Stahnke is a German composer and musicologist from Kiel. He writes chamber music, orchestral music and stage music. His music is notably known for his use of microtonality.- Life:...
, Georg Hajdu
Georg Hajdu
Georg Hajdu is a German composer of Hungarian descent. His work is dedicated to the combination of music, science and computer technology. He is noted for his opera Der Sprung – Beschreibung einer Oper and the network music performance environment Quintet.net.-Biography:Hajdu was born to Hungarian...
, Dror Feiler
Dror Feiler
Dror Elimelech Feiler is a Swedish-Israeli musician, artist and leftist activist. He has been living in Stockholm, Sweden since 1973. He is married to the artist Gunilla Sköld-Feiler...
, Annea Lockwood
Annea Lockwood
Annea Lockwood is a New Zealand born American composer. She taught electronic music at Vassar College. Her work often involves recordings of natural found sounds...
, Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield is a New York composer who specializes in using detuned or out of tune samples and industrial noises. Her work often contains improvisation and frequently uses extended techniques and/or altered musical instruments...
, Karlheinz Essl
Karlheinz Essl
Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser and composition teacher.- Biography :Essl was born in Vienna. His studies at the University of Music in Vienna included: composition , electro-acoustic music and double bass...
, Reinhard Flender, Sascha Lino Lemke, Chris Brown, Oliver Schneller
Oliver Schneller
Oliver Martin Schneller is a German composer and saxophonist.-Life:Schneller grew up in Ireland, Sudan, Belgium and the Philippines...
, Lukas Ligeti
Lukas Ligeti
Lukas Ligeti is a composer and percussionist. His work incorporates elements of jazz, contemporary classical, and various world musics.- Background :...
, Anthony De Ritis, amongst others.
She performed at Musica Viva festival in Portugal, the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Ought-One Festival in Vermont, CCRMA (Stanford University), UC Santa Barbara, CNMAT (UC Berkeley), the Interpretation Series in Merkin Hall (New York), Laeiszhalle
Laeiszhalle
The Laeiszhalle is a concert hall in Hamburg, Germany and home to the Hamburger Symphoniker.The hall is named after the German shipowning company F. Laeisz, founder of the concert venue and was planned by the architect Martin Haller.-External links:...
(Hamburg), Mills College (Oakland), Alte Feuerwache (Cologne), Schloss Moyland, Klangart Festival (Leipzig), Festival Neue Musik Lüneburg. Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted classical music organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon...
marathon (NY) as well as additional concerts in Mexico, Estonia, Tel Aviv and South America.
In 2010 she released her CD Ce n'est pas un piano with pieces by Tan Dun
Tan Dun
Tan Dun is a Chinese contemporary classical composer, most widely known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.-Early life in China:...
, Manfred Stahnke, Georg Hajdu, Cathy Milliken, Annie Gosfield, Annea Lockwood and Sascha Lemke produced by German label Ambitus.
She is a member and musical director of the Hamburg branch of GEDOK, a German/Austrian women's art organization.