Franziska Baumann is a vocalist, improviser-composer and sound artist. As a vocal artist, she draws on the human voice's archaic, experimental and stylistically diverse expression. Together with gestural sensor electronics, she invents music in which she creates her versions of the narrative, non-linear and spatial vocal spheres.
She composes for (vocal) ensembles with scenic practice. Under her direction, she has created numerous projects such as "Liquid Souls" (Donaueschinger Musiktage 2011), "Fictions" for Ensemble NEC (2012), "Interzones" with Xhosa singers and live electronics (CapeTown 2014), "NOMAD-X" (Saarbrücken/Warsaw 2015), "Gravity Pleasures" (pakt-Festival Bern 2017), "Das Raunen der Dinge" (Musikfestival Bern 2019).
As a soloist and in ensembles, she has toured extensively throughout Europe, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Belarus and South Korea, including festivals such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Audio Art Festival Krakow, ISCM New World Music Days-CH, Taktlos Basel and Zurich, Jazzfestival Schaffhausen, Suonoporilpopulo Montréal, FIMAV Festival Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, Festival Jazz em Agosto Lisbon, SoundOut Festival Australia and many others.
She teaches contemporary vocal practice and improvisation/composition at the Hochschule der Künste Bern. Collaboration in the BFH research projects "Sound (without) Body" (2007/2017), "Gesture Performance/Gestik als künstlerischer Impuls" (2009), "Potentiale des musikalischen im sprachlichen Kontext" (2018).
Book publication: "Embodied Human-Computer Interaction in Vocal Music Performance", Computational Series Springer London (2023).
She has received various work and funding grants, is a prizewinner of Young Composers Bern (1994), the recognition prize of the Canton of Bern (2008), the Entr'Act funding grant of the Canton of Bern (2018) and the Landis & Gyr studio grant in London (2022).
