FLASH

The concert is co-organized by the Contemporary Music Lab (CML), the Goethe Institut Thessaloniki and the Municipality of Thessaloniki. It is part of the Contemporary Music Lab project which concerns the organization of concerts/performances of contemporary music in historical monuments of Thessaloniki. The present concert takes place in the Yeni Tzami, in a place with special acoustics and obvious cultural connotations (East-West). The use of such unique (also in terms of acoustics) historic monuments for concerts/performances functions to the benefit of the monuments themselves – in terms of their prominence – but also of the creative imprint of the city’s cultural continuity.

The concert features two important German performers of contemporary music, Nina Janßen-Deinzer, one of the leading clarinetists of her generation, and soprano Johanna Greulich with a broad and varied career in the field of contemporary music and music theatre.

Works will be presented for voice and clarinet or double bass clarinet – an impressive and hard-to-find due to its size and range instrument.

The works that Nina Janßen-Deinzer and Johanna Greulich will perform are by Georges Aperghis, one of the most important composers of our time, Cinq Couplets for voice and contrabass clarinet (1988), Luciano Berio, one of the leading figures of the post-war music, Sequenza III for solo voice (1966), Wolfgang Rihm, one of Germany’s most well-known post-war composers, Zu singen für soprano and clarinet (2006) and Arnulf Herrmann, Rockabye for soprano and clarinet/contrabass clarinet (2020).

Finally, the concert presents works by three composers from Thessaloniki, Michalis Lapidakis Reflections I & II for soprano and contrabass clarinet (premiere, 2023), Dimitris Maronidis, Impulse Response for contrabass clarinet and electronics (premiere, 2023) and Dimitris Papageorgiou, Debout version II for contrabass clarinet(2023).

Nina Janßen-Deinzer

Nina Janßen-Deinzer was born in Cologne/Germany and has become one of the leading clarinettists of her generation. She studied at the prestigious Hans Deinzer School in Hanover and concluded her studies with the concert examination. The highly-acclaimed musician has performed solo and chamber music concerts at venues around the world. She received first prizes at the “Jugend musiziert” competition, the German Music Competition, and the International Chamber Music Competition in Osaka (Japan).

In addition to her classical-romantic repertoire, the clarinettist is strongly devoted to contemporary music and was solo clarinet of Ensemble Modern Frankfurt from 2006 -2017. Many pieces are premiered by her and written for her, for example by Mark Andre, Arnulf Herrmann, Saed Haddad, Ying Wang, Jia Guoping, Eun Hwa Cho, Onur Türkmen, Bertram Wee. As soloist she played on many festivals such as Salzburger Festspiele, Salzburg biennale, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ultraschall Berlin, Festival NOW Essen, Berliner Festwochen, Forum Festival Moskau, Kiew Contemporary Music Days and with orchestras like SWR Baden-Baden and Freiburg, Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Kremerata Baltica.

She plays all clarinets from E flat to contrabass clarinet and saxophone. Janßen-Deinzer also specializes in performing the classical repertoire on historical clarinets. Her works are available on CD, including pieces she has performed as soloist with SWR orchestra at NEOS, with the Ensemble Modern and the Delos Quintet on ars musici. She was a lecturer at the International Ensemble Modern Academy and the Academy of Music in Frankfurt from 2006-2017. Since 2015 she is professor for woodwindchambermusic at the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg. Since 2018 she is also teacher for contemporary music at the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg and since 2020 teacher for clarinet at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin. She has also guest-lectured at the music academies in Karlsruhe, Berlin, Weimar, Moskau, Krakow ( Poland), Shanghai, Singapore and Beijing (China), Kiew ( Ukraine), Zhengzhou ( China), Guanajuato ( Mexiko), Baku (Azerbaijan), Manila (Philippines), Hanoi (Vietnam), the Sangat Festival in Bombay (India), and at the International Clarinet Course in Prades (Spain). She has given lectures on behalf of the Goethe Institut at music academies in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Russia, and on behalf of the Siemens Foundation at the project “contempo primo”  in Beijing (China).

Johanna Greulich

Soprano Johanna Greulich, born in Hannover in Germany, studied opera singing and vocal pedagogy in Frankfurt am Main with Prof. Heidrun Kordes and completed a specialized master’s degree in Contemporary Music with Jürg Henneberger in Basel.
In 2015, with the Eunoia Quintet, of which she is a founding member, she became a prize winner of the Concours Nicati Bern, the most prestigious prize for Contemporary Music in Switzerland. The Eunoia Quintet realizes exciting performative concert formats and new music theater performances. In 2012, the singer received the Special Prize for New Music at the Concours Suisse Ernst Haefliger in Bern. She won the special prize for modern interpretation at the Hilde Zadek Singing Competition in 2011 and 1st prize in the Lenzewski Competition in Frankfurt in 2008.

Roles in classical operas and operettas took Johanna Greulich to opera houses in Bern, Chur and Lucerne. She has performed contemporary music theater in Mannheim, Bern, Munich, Lucerne, Heidelberg, Heilbronn, Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna, among others.
For the productions “Hypermusic Prologue” by Hector Parra (Berlin/Basel) and “Pnima” by Chaya Czernowin (Lucerne) Johanna Greulich was nominated as Singer of the Year 2013/2014 in the magazine “Opernwelt”.

The soprano has performed at renowned festivals such as Wien Modern, Lucerne Festival, Munich Biennale and Rainy Days Luxembourg.  There are recordings and reports about her work on Bayrischer Rundfunk, SRF 2 Kultur, SWR 2 and Hessischer Rundfunk.  In 2018, the music theater “Fliegenglas” by Johanna Greulich and Clemens Hund-Göschel was performed at the Konzerttheater Bern at the International Platform for New Music Theater.  Johanna Greulich is particularly interested in the combination of contemporary, classical, popular and early music and performance.
Coaching and workshops with her have taken place, for example, at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, at colleges in Edinburgh, London, Frankfurt and Sélestat and with the Jugendensemble Neue Musik Rheinland-Pfalz/Saarland.  She completed the 2-year advanced training course “Pedagogy of Popular Styles” certified by the Federal Association of Vocal Pedagogues in Germany in April 2023.