Hans Thomalla, born in Bonn, Germany, studied composition at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule. In 1999 he was appointed first Assistant Dramaturge, later Dramaturge and Artistic Advisor to the Director at the Stuttgart Opera, where he worked on the new productions of Lachenmann’s “Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern” as well as Schreker’s “Gezeichnete” among others. From 2002-2007 he pursued a Doctor of Musical Arts at Stanford University. He was a fellow of the DAAD, the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, and the Stanford Humanities Center during his studies.Hans Thomlla has been awarded numerous prizes: among others the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (2004) and the Christoph-Delz-Prize (2006). He was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the SWR-Experimentalstudio. His music has been performed at major Festivals, such as Tanglewood, Donaueschingen, Wien Modern, Witten, Ultraschall Berlin, ECLAT, Takefu, and Steirischer Herbst. In 2005 the Festival d’Automne a Paris presented a portrait of his music in two concerts with the Ensemble Recherche. The City of Zurich, Switzerland, featured his music in four concerts at the 2008 Contemporary Music Days, and the Munich Biennale portrayed his work in a concert with the Münchener Philharmoniker and Johannes Kalitzke in 2010. In 2008 a Portrait-CD with Hans Thomalla’s chamber music played by the Ensemble Recherche and Lucas Fels was released on the Wergo Label.Future projects include an Opera "Fremd" for the main stage of the Stuttgart Opera and a new piece for the Donaueschingen Festival.Since 2004 Hans Thomalla has close ties to the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, where several of his works have been premiered, where he gave lectures in 2006 as well as 2008, and where he served on the composition Faculty in 2010. Since 2007 he is Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Northwestern University in Chicago.

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