Brigitta Muntendorf studied composition in Bremen with Younghi Paagh-Paan and Günther Steinke and in Cologne at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz with Krzysztof Meyer, Rebecca Saunders and Johannes Schöllhorn. During her studies she founded the Ensemble Garage to create an independent platform for musicians, composers and artists of different professions to develop new works and concert formats through the process of collective and cooperative rehearsing.
Brigitta Muntendorf follows in her work as a composer the vision of a music that refers through multilayered contextualization to different art forms and models of expression. Furthermore she works on the translation of social phenomena into music by exploring rhizomatic settings. Her interest in interactions between the digital culture – which is based on a translation of real social needs – and the artificiality in pronouncing individual necessities are embodied in a wide range of musical setups.
These ideas are mirrored in different music theatres she composed for the pocket opera festival Salzburg 2011-2015 as well as in her music theatres for the Biennale Munic (2016) and ECLAT festival Stuttgart (iScreen, YouScream! 2017). With her public privacy series for solo performer, youtube-performers and electronics she established the term “Social Composing”. In 2016 she realized in collaboration with Stephanie Thiersch the CITY DANCE Cologne, a 12 hours performance with over 500 performers according to the American dancer Anna Halprin.
She received commissions for various international festivals in such as Acht Brücken Festival Cologne, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, eclat Festival Stuttgart, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien modern (2018) and was awarded for several prizes (Bernd Alois Zimmermann Prize, Carl von Ossietzky Prize, First Prize of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Cologne, Förderpreis der Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and release of her CD “It may be all an illusion”, German Music Author’s award 2017). Residences in Paris (Cité Internationale des Arts), Ensemble Modern Academy (Frankfurt), at the Villa Concordia in Bamberg and Villa Kamogawa Kyoto (2017) infused her work and triggered the interdisciplinary characteristics of her works.
Next to her close relationship to Ensemble Garage she worked with different ensembles together (Ensemble Mosaik, Asko/Schönberg ensemble, PHACE, Calefax, Decoder ensemble, Klangforum Wien, musikFabrik or Ensemble Modern). Brigitta Muntendorf is regulary invited to give seminars at different universities in Germany and Autria. She lives as a freelance composer and art director of the Ensemble Garage in Cologne and Vienna.