Composer-performer Frauke Aulbert is considered one of the most active and versatile phenomena in new music, in which she appears as a composer, performance artist and curator, and has gained international recognition especially as a vocalist. Her works fuse experimental music, media art, text, costume, dance and the most extreme vocal techniques. After studying opera singing, she continues to explore the human voice with all its possibilities.
In numerous collaborations with composers with over 60 world premieres, some of them staged and/or choreographed by Aulbert, she has experienced the most diverse styles of contemporary music. She has worked with Ensemble Garage, names ensemble, HANATSUmiroir, DissonArt, L'art pour l'art, MAM, Ensemble S201, Uli Fussenegger, Shanna Pranatitis-Gutierrez, Eva Zöllner, with Companie le Grain, Opera silens and the conductors Christoph Löser, Johannes Kalitzke and Peter Rundel, among others.
Her own works often integrate various media like light, costume, props, dance/bodywork, live- and electronic music, text or video. Her compositions have been performed at festivals such as Warsaw Autumn, Resonant Bodies NYC, Bachfest Tübingen, at the Greek National Opera Athens, Festival Átlátszó Hang Budapest, Elbphilharmonie, at Ensems Valencia, Performing Arts Festival Berlin, Frequenz Kiel, Sommer in Stuttgart, Kontraklang etc..
As a soprano and vocal-acrobat “Hamburg’s queen of avantgarde” (Hamburger Abendblatt Jan. 2010) Frauke Aulbert can offer an almost infinite, impressive vocal sound palette which enfolds a nearly four octave range. Next to classical singing (diploma), over- and undertone-singing, multiphonics, techniques from Bulgarian folclore, Korean gugak, noh, gamelan, jazz, dhrupad, beatboxing a.s.o. she continuously researches vocal techniques and adds them to her skills.
She has toured throughout Europe, Australia, Brazil, Tunisia, South Korea and the USA, to Witten Days for New Chamber Music, Casa Giacinto Scelsi Rome, Radio France/Festival Présence, ZKM, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Onassis Centre Athens, Internationale Darmstädter Ferienkurse, LIG Art Hall Seoul, Resonant Bodies New York, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Ear Taxi Chicago, Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, International Stockhausen-Summerclasses, Hamburger Klangwerktage, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Klang Copenhaguen, What’s next Brussels, Berghain and Klangwerkstatt Berlin etc.
Aulbert has collaborated with composers such as Chaya Czernowin, Iris ter Schiphorst, Georges Aperghis, Vinko Globokar, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Simon Stockhausen, Brigitta Muntendorf, Heera Kim, Michael Maierhof, Geoffroy Drouin and Alexander Schubert. She has been recoding for film ('The Future', Miranda July), CD (Decoder Ensemble, Magic Malik etc.) and radio (Deutschlandradio, RAI, Radio France etc.)
Frauke Aulbert was awarded various prizes and grants, a.o. the first price by the Stockhausen-foundation, as well as artist residencies in Rome (Goethe Institut), Paris (Cité Internationale des Arts) and Stuttgart (Akademie Schloss Solitude) in 2016/17 (for her project ‘Beatboxing and the Avant Garde’) and at Villa Kamogawa, Kyoto, in 2020, where she studied the music and singing of geisha in Gion, Kyoto, Noh-theatra, Kamigata-mai (geisha dance) and Butoh.
Aulbert is a founding member of Decoder Ensemble and artistic director of the ensembles Collect/Project (Hamburg/Chicago), Forum Neue Vokalmusik and the performance collective Aulbert/Saiki. She studied in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, and in Kiel and Hamburg, Germany. Her diploma thesis examined ‘Overtone singing in Contemporary Music’. She is initiator and curator of the Festival für Immaterielle Kunst, which fuses new music with performance art.
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