composer

b. 1992
Manuel Zwerger, born in 1992 in Bolzano, studied Composition with Franz Baur, Simon Steen-Andersen, Niels Rønsholdt and Juliana Hodkinson at the Conservatory of Innsbruck and at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus. He received further education from Hannes Kerschbaumer, Wolfram Schurig and Sebastian Themessl.

Manuel Zwerger moves as a composer at the intersection of new music, performance and installation art, whereby visual and extra-musical material is not subordinated to the sound quality, but made it inherent.

Oriented towards intermedia, he pays special attention to scenic, performative and theatrical aspects, which are integrated in an interdisciplinary and multi-sensory manner into the socio-aesthetic complex of tasks of our media society. The thematic focus lies on the usual phenomena in the process of making music, which are connected and questioned with influences from everyday life, pop culture, anti-art, current trends and science. He works particularly with prepared instruments and new media.

Manuel Zwerger's music was performed by the Ensemble Modern, the ensemble chromoson, the NAMES Ensemble, airborne extended, strings&noise, Windkraft - Kapelle für neue Musik, the HOAX Quartet, the Orchester der Akademie St. Blasius, the Tiroler Kammerorchester Innstrumenti, the Sonarkraft string orchestra and various Soloists. Long-term collaborations with recorder player Caroline Mayrhofer and horn player Samuel Stoll deserve special mention.

He has received various grants and scholarships for his work, including the scholarship from the Richard Wagner Verband Wien (2015), the composition scholarship from the Akademie Musiktheater heute of the Deutsche Bank Foundation (2017-19), the Hilde-Zach-Kompositionsförderstipendium from the city of Innsbruck (2018), the Startstipendium from the Austrian Federal Chancellery (2020), the Heinrich-von-Mörl-Stipendium (2021) and the Staatsstipendium from the Austrian Federal Chancellery (2022). He won the CROSS Award and CROSS Residency in Verbania (2019) and was a finalist in the music theater competition OPER.A 20:21 of the Haydn Foundation (2019). His music has been performed in Europe, Asia and South America and has been broadcast on the radio several times.

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