Mark Andre, born in Paris in 1964, creates in his music existential experiences for the listener, spaces characterised by subtle, minutely worked-out processes of transformation. His chamber works, delicate and concentrated, have been described by the Hamburger Abendblatt as “acoustic houses of cards that no wind can blow down”. In his orchestral works the practicing Protestant also shows himself to be a sensitive explorer of sound, guided by the spiritual dimension of the creative process.

After his studies in France, including those at the Paris Conservatory with Claude Ballif and Gérard Grisey, Mark Andre found a new musical home in Germany. He describes the encounter with the music of Helmut Lachenmann, the score of whose piano concerto Ausklang he happened to stumble across, as having been a revelation. He subsequently went through extensive composition studies with Lachenmann at the Academy of Music in Stuttgart, and studied musical electronics with André Richard at the experimental studio of Southwest German Radio, in the meantime moving the focus of his life from France to Germany. Here he soon received grants and prizes, such as the Kranichsteiner Music Prize at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (1996), first prize at the Stuttgart International Composers Competition (1997), and the composition prize from Frankfurt Opera (2001). In 1998 he received his first invitation to teach at the Darmstadt Summer Courses. In 2002 he received the Advancement Award from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Particular interest was aroused by the 2004 premiere of Mark Andre’s tripartite music theatre work …22, 13… at the Munich Biennale. This work’s title refers to a passage in the Apocalypse of St. John. His orchestral triptych …auf…, which he completed in 2007 and whose final section was premiered in Donaueschingen, received the prize from the SWR Symphony Orchestra