Wieland Hoban

Wieland Hoban is both a composer and a translator working in the fields of art music, philosophy, and literature (translated authors include Adorno, Sloterdijk, and Celan). He studied composition at the Frankfurt Academy of Music and Performing Arts, and his music has been performed all over Europe. Throughout his career, he has also been involved in the musical discourse as an author, lecturer, and teacher, for example in his long-standing work at the Darmstadt International Summer Course.

Hoban will be working on the music theatre piece Riddley Walker, based on Russell Hoban’s 1980 post-apocalyptic novel of the same name, using the script of the author’s unpublished stage adaptation. A modernist aesthetic will be combined with a rugged, non-classical approach to vocal writing in conjunction with the use of non-classical instruments and objects, striving to do justice both to the brokenness of the depicted world and the idiosyncratic wordplay of the book’s unique dialect.