Lisa Streich was born in 1985 in Norra Rada, Sweden. She studied composition and organ in Berlin, Stockholm, Salzburg, Paris, and Cologne with Johannes Schöllhorn, Adriana Hölszky, Mauro Lanza, and Margareta Hürholz among others. Topping off her musical education were masterclasses with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Takasugi, Hanspeter Kyburz, and Daniel Roth. She currently holds a scholarship at the NMH Oslo, where Helmut Lachenmann is her mentor.
She likes to work with motorized instruments of her own creation in her music. She is fascinated by the de-subjectivization of sound, which for her becomes universal, speaking of and for everyone. She is also interested in the incongruent contrasts that can arise on both visual and auditory levels at the same time. Likewise, she pursues a keen interest in imperfect, well-known chords from recordings which she decidedly takes apart and weaves – sometimes with 40 voices – throughout an orchestral movement.
“Lisa Streich has her own voice,” says Alan Gilbert. “The musicians immediately recognized the quality of her music and found her work special.” (Elbphilharmonie Blog)
Streich has received commissions from the Lucerne Festival, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Swedish Radio Choir, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and the Shizuoka Concert Hall. Her music has seen performances from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, and Malmö Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music with a commission for a Concerto Grosso, Quatuor Diotima, ensemble recherche, the Eric Ericson Kammerchor, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne Montréal, Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, and many others.
She has written theater music for the Salzburg Pocket Opera Festival, on the seven senses of man, as well as a closing scene for Henze’s “Wundertheater” for the Bavarian State Opera.
Awards and fellowships include the Cité des Arts Paris, the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation Orchestra Prize, the Akademie der Künste Berlin’s Busoni Composition Prize, the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Fellowship, a fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome, a Roche Young Commission at the Lucerne Festival, and the Ernst von Siemens Composers' Prize. In 2020, she was the first recipient of the Claussen Simon Composition Prize, in 2021, she was honored with the Lilla Christ Johnson Composer’s Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music for her work AUGENLIDER, and in 2022 she received the Heidelberg Women Artists’ Prize. In 2019, Lisa Streich was chosen to be a ricordilab laureate, an international program from publisher Ricordi Berlin that promotes young composers.
Portrait CDs were released in 2018 on WERGO/Zeitgenössische Musik and in 2019 on KARIOS.
Lectures on her music have taken place at the Royal College of Music Stockholm, the Colombia University New York, the Sibelius Academy Helsinki, and at the CRR de Paris. Dialog about music, art, and their possibilities is a subject close to Streich’s heart.
Future performances and commissions include an orchestral work for the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Alan Gilbert, a violin concerto for the Munich Chamber Orchestra and Carolin Widmann. There is also a new orchestral work for the Staatstheater Hannover, a string quartet for Quatuor Diotima, and a cantata for the Klangforum Heidelberg and the Heidelberger Spring Music Festival. She also composes a new work for Ensemble Intercontemporain and Collegium Novum Zürich as well as a new work for orchestra for the Berlin Philharmonic.
Lisa Streich lives on Gotland, Sweden.
(Current as of Mar 2022)