October 2024

Stefan Beyer is a Berlin-based composer of experimental music.
Born in Braunschweig, he studied composition, music and history in Leipzig and Gothenburg, Sweden. International appearances, e.g. with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra or the Ensemble Modern, as well as radio broadcasts on Deutschlandfunk Kultur and hr2 followed. Beyer has also received scholarships and grants from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and was a fellow at the artist residencies Villa Aurora, U.S.A., and the Cité internationale des Arts, Paris. From 2011 to 2013, he taught contemporary orchestration at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music in Leipzig. He is a permanent contributor to the journal Musik & Ästhetik and chairman of the association for contemporary music and literature forma Leipzig e. V. Beyer is currently working on a new work for orchestra with the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra 2025/26.

Michelle Lou is a composer, performer and sound artist who works mainly in the field of electroacoustic music, both in hardware and in computer based forms. She has also created large scale sound installations which are often performative and collaborative. Her work has been presented at Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the Festival of New American Music and Kammer Klang in London. She received degrees in double bass performance and music composition from UC San Diego with additional studies at The Conservatorio G. Nicolini in Piacenza, Italy (double bass) and The UDK in Graz, Austria (composition), the latter on a Fulbright Fellowship. Graduate studies culminated in a doctorate in composition from Stanford University. Michelle Lou was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and an Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She has taught at the WasteLAnd Summer Composition Course, at the Academy for Neue Music in Boswil, Switzerland, and as a guest lecturer at Dartmouth College. Michelle Lou is currently a guest lecturer in composition and electronic music at UC Santa Cruz.

Sunnyi Melles, the Swiss film and theater actress, was born to Hungarian parents in Luxembourg. Her grandmother Lóth Ila was a silent film actress. Her father Carl Melles was a conductor and her mother, Judith Rohonczy, an actress. Her daughter Leonille Wittgenstein is also an actress. After her parents emigrated from Hungary in 1956, Sunnyi Melles grew up in Switzerland. At the age of 10, she was on stage with her mother at the Theater Basel. At the age of 14, she played her first film role, Rosa, alongside Max von Sydow in the movie Steppenwolf. She completed her acting school at the Otto Falkenberg School in Munich. In addition to engagements at the Munich Kammerspiele, the Salzburg Festival and the Vienna Burgtheater, she has appeared in films such as Hotel Adlon, Buddenbrooks, Narcissus and Goldmund and most recently in Triangle of Sadness and the mini-series Becoming Karl Lagerfeld.

Constantin Wittgenstein, born in Munich in 1994, is a passionate DJ and has been producing music for over 10 years. Wittgenstein began playing the piano at the age of five, followed by the drums at 13. He studied Creative Music Technology at London Metropolitan University. His music ranges from experimental music to house, dub and techno. His first LP Leonille was released in 2021 and his first single Don't Stop Looking in 2024. As a DJ, Wittgenstein plays clubs all over Europe, among others the Ministry of Sound, Brilliant Corners (London), Bob Beaman and Legal (Munich). Wittgenstein composed the music for "One Last Evening" (2023), directed by Lukas Natrath. He also accompanies readings with music, such as the Max Reinhardt readings at the New York Cultural Forum and the Anne Frank Graphic Diaries, which were performed at the Gasteig Cultural Center as part of the Jewish Artists Festival in Munich.