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California Institute of the Arts

Volker Straebel

Pronouns: The Herb Alpert School of Music

Dean

Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music

Volker Straebel headshot
Email address: vstraebel@calarts.edu
Phone number: 661-253-7816
Office address:
B323E
California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, California 91355
Degrees:
  • MA
    Musicology, Philosophy, and Library Studies: The Technical University of Berlin
Personal website: Website

Volker Straebel is a musicologist, composer, and curator. He grew up in Berlin, (West) Germany, and received his MA in musicology, philosophy, and library studies from the Technical University of Berlin. After a career in music journalism, Volker served as a curatorial advisor to the annual large-scale music festival MaerzMusik (Berliner Festspiele, 2002-14). 

In 2009 he was appointed director of the Electronic Music Studio at the Technical University Berlin, and in 2015 he became the director of the interdisciplinary master’s program Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the University of the Arts Berlin--a program that he fundamentally reformed and shaped. Since 2021, Volker has served as dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts.

Volker’s academic work, which focuses on experimental music and sound art, and his artistic practice and curatorial pursuits are interwoven and complement each other. He edited a volume of early piano music by Morton Feldman (C. F. Peters) that presented some works for the first time in print, and edited, with Julia H. Schröder, a volume of research on John Cage, Cage & Consequences (2012), and the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts Reader (2022). He has published analytical writings on Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, sound installation art, and media-specific music, among others.

Volker’s compositions and performances range from amplified jackstraws to inaudible infrasonic pieces. He has a fondness for conceptual work. Among his larger productions are realizations of indeterminate scores by John Cage (Urban Circus on Berlin Alexanderplatz, realization of Circus on based on Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin for speaker and 48-channel tape; Aachen Musicircus on Europeras with Europera 4 and Fontana Mix, composed realization, and Song Books with Concert for Piano and Orchestra.

Work Samples

sich hinter dem Lied verstecken, installation, 2022. Gallery Zwitschermaschine, Berlin

“On the Early History and Typology of Sound Installation Art” [Zur fröhen Geschichte und Typologie der
Klanginstallation, 2008], trans. Chelsea Leventhal, in: Sound Studies and Sonic Arts Reader, eds. Julia H.
Schröder and Volker Straebel. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2022