Andrea Neumann

Andrea Neumann (born 1968 in Freiburg im Breisgau) is an internationally acclaimed composer, pianist, and performer in the field of new and experimental music. Raised in Japan and Hamburg, she studied classical piano at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. Since the mid-1990s, Neumann has lived and worked in Berlin, where she has played a pivotal role in shaping the city’s “Echtzeitmusik” (real-time music) scene—a vibrant field at the intersection of new music, improvisation, noise, and sound art.

Neumann is especially known for developing and performing on the “Innenklavier” (inside piano), a radically reduced, prepared, and electronically amplified instrument consisting of a string-covered aluminum frame. With this instrument, she explores new sonic territories between composition, improvisation, and performance, often employing everyday objects and extended techniques. She is a founding member of the LABOR SONOR collective, which has curated one of Berlin’s most important concert series for experimental music since 2000. As a composer-performer, she works both solo and in ensembles such as Les Femmes Savantes, Phosphor, and the Splitter Orchester, and regularly appears at international festivals and venues.

Since 2020, Neumann has served as Professor of Improvisation at the FHNW Academy of Music in Basel. Her work has been recognized with numerous commissions and fellowships, including from Deutschlandfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, MDR, Villa Aurora Los Angeles, and Prix Ars Electronica. Her artistic practice centers on the performative contextualization of sound, the interplay between instrument, space, and body, and the search for beauty in noise and silence.

Andrea Neumann lives and works in Berlin.