Sonic-Borderlines-Collective consists of a core ensemble of musicians who have been intensively engaged with intercultural music for many years. They have come together to further explore the boundaries of “trans-traditional” music practice. The ensemble is complemented by musicians from different disciplines and countries (who are not listed extensively here) who also share the desire to experiment, communicate, and learn.
Claudia van Hasselt regularly devotes herself to experimental art projects, e.g., in collaboration with French artist Saâdane Afif. In numerous engagements in opera productions and at festivals such as the Ruhrtriennale, Märzmusik Berlin, Konzerthaus Berlin, Staatsoper im Schillertheater, and Deutsche Oper Berlin, she has worked as a soloist with conductors such as Jonathan Stockhammer, Peter Eötvös, Manuel Nawri, and Titus Engel. Her extensive solo repertoire includes numerous world premieres, including works by Johannes Schöllhorn, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Sergej Newski, Sarah Nemtsov, Wolfgang Rihm, Sofia Gubaidulina, Carola Bauckoldt, and Beat Furrer.
In 2013, she founded FrauVonDa///storytelling in music as artistic director with director Lotte Greschik, audio-visual artist Nicolas Wiese, and costume designer Marianne Heide. Crossing genre boundaries, they illuminate historical material from the perspective of individual destinies and present it in the context of contemporary music. This results in original mini-operas that are collages of historical and contemporary material.
In 2016, she began researching traditional songs, initially focusing on the common roots of Persian and Western musical traditions in the context of contemporary music. She pays particular attention to the influence of Persian tradition on Western singing and its ornamentation. In her artistic expression and contemporary commissioned compositions, she focuses on a musical-experimental space between both musical traditions and their musical thought structures.
In the same year, Claudia van Hasselt founded the FemaleSingersUnited network.
It is expressly dedicated to the collaboration of traditional singers worldwide with German/European singers and musicians in the context of contemporary music. The network strives for intensive professional and artistic exchange.
The focus is on the intertwining of cultural spaces and musical traditions in an individual, experimental sound language between improvisational and composed works. The trans-traditional artistic product, adapted to the circumstances, is based on the deep structures of the respective cultures and combines them in contemporary formats. The first artistic product of this collaboration is the Persian-German music theater ORNAMENT, which premiered in November 2019. This work was continued in 2020 with the project ‘mimesis::imitatio’.
Bakr Khleifi was born in Jerusalem and began learning music at an early age. At the age of six, he began learning the oud and studied with the renowned oud player Ahmad al-Khatib. Over the next ten years, he studied with various oud players such as Simon Shaheen and Samir Joubran from the Joubran Trio.
At the age of 15, he began learning the double bass and within a year became a member of Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said’s West Eastern Divan Orchestra. Bakr holds a bachelor’s degree in world music with a focus on the oud from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He also holds a master’s degree in double bass from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv.
Throughout his career, Bakr has performed in numerous venues as both a solo oud player and double bassist. He was a member of the West Eastern Divan Orchestra for six years and has performed at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Teatro La Scala, the Berlin Philharmonic, Boulez Saal, and the Royal Albert Hall, to name a few. As an oud player, he has performed many times in his native Palestine, as well as in Vienna, Berlin, Seville, Gothenburg, and other cities in Europe and the United States.
Bakr was a teacher at the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Ramallah, where he taught music appreciation and music theory and instructed young students in orchestral repertoire. Bakr’s musical identity is diverse, as he had to combine learning both the maqam system and the Western classical tradition from early childhood. He firmly believes that one can achieve perfection in a particular musical genre while remaining open and receptive to other musical disciplines. In the field of new music, he has played with the Ensemble Extrakte, among others.
Mathis Mayr has been a member of the Mosaik ensemble since 2008. His repertoire includes Renaissance and folk music, contemporary compositions, jazz, and flamenco. His musical interests range from experimental electronic music, historical performance practice, and microtonal music to traditional songs from the Alps and the Mediterranean region. His lively interpretation of Feldman’s Patterns in a Chromatic Field (Wergo 2019, with Antonis Anissegos) was hailed by Strad Magazine as “remarkable and deeply moving.”
He studied cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich with Helmar Stiehler and, with lasting influence, in Sydney, Australia, with Uzi Wiesel. He learned modal music and oud from Ziad Rajab and received important inspiration from oud players Thimios Atzakas and Kamylia Jubran. Together with Sebo Flaig (percussion) and Bastian Duncker (saxophone/keyboard), he founded the band Pain Perdu; their first album, recorded by sound engineer Sebastian Schottke, is called “Brandströmer.” . As a chamber musician, he regularly plays chamber music with Antonis Anissegos (piano), synthesizer rocker Jochen Irmler, composers Carl-Friedrich Oesterhelt and Richard van Schoor, Jongsuk Kim (piano), and in a trio with Ernst Surberg and Liping Ting (performance, vocals). As a member of the ensemble mosaik, he has performed at many international festivals for contemporary music and has participated in numerous recordings, such as Enno Poppe’s Radio.
Cathy Milliken is an internationally award-winning artist and composer (including the Prix Italia and the APRA AMCOS/AMC Art Music Award, and was also Associate Composer of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra from 2018 to 2020) known for her atmospheric instrumental and vocal works. She moves between diverse musical worlds and takes great pleasure in promoting creativity and participation. The diversity and relevance of her works have earned her international recognition as a leading composer, creative director, educational consultant, and performer. Born in Brisbane and now living in Berlin, Milliken completed her studies in Australia with a focus on performance (piano and oboe) and continued her studies in Europe with Heinz Holliger and Maurice Bourgue.
As a founding member of Ensemble Modern, she worked extensively with artists such as György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Fred Frith, and Frank Zappa. Milliken has composed for concert, opera, radio, and film. Her commissions include the Southbank Centre London, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Berlin State Opera, and Musica Viva of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Her international participatory compositions include the Umculo Festival (South Africa), Future Labo (Japan), the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Munich Biennale. A versatile performer and member of the former Ensemble Extrakte Berlin, Milliken is known for her sound improvisations with oboe and voice.
Jeremy Woodruff, Artistic Director
Jeremy Woodruff is a composer and artist whose numerous works and writings are influenced by his intensive exploration of sound in politics and transcultural music. He lives in Berlin and is a senior scientist and deputy director of the Centre for Artistic Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Previously, he was Visiting Professor of Sound Studies at Bard College Berlin, Professor of Composition and Music Theory at Istanbul Technical University, Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM), Lecturer in Composition and Music Theory at KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, India, and founder and artistic director of the Berlin School of Sound. He has collaborated with various artists not only in sound art, but also in video, dance, theater, and radio works, including Marianna Simnett, Bani Abidi, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Meg Stuart, and others. His radio show “Berlin School of Sound” can be heard every month on Colaboradio, FRBB 88.4 FM in Berlin and 90.7 FM in Potsdam, Germany.
His concert works have been commissioned in Berlin by Ensemble Extrakte, Kammerensemble Neue Musik, and Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin; in London by Ensemble Decibel; and in Istanbul by Hezarfen Ensemble and other international ensembles. His sound art has been presented by Radio Berlin Brandenburg (RBB) Kunst im Bau, in various galleries such as Errant Sound, KW Berlin, AD Gallery Bremen, Kasa Gallery Istanbul, and Art Bangaluru in Bangalore, India. His writings have been published in Interference: A Journal of Audio Culture, Journal of Sonic Studies, KunstMusik, Sruti Magazine, Verlag für Moderne Kunst (Nuremberg), Bloomsbury Press, Les Presses du Réel, and Errant Bodies Press. His forthcoming co-edited volume Haunted Soundscapes: Transcultural Perspectives on Music, Sound, and Power in Turkey will be published by Routledge Press in 2026. He is a founding member of the Errant Sound project space in Berlin, where he co-founded the Dystopia Sound Art Festival and co-curated the festival in Berlin in 2018, Istanbul in 2019, and Istanbul in 2021 (https://www.dystopie-festival.net/). He was co-curator of the Dystopia Sound Art Biennale India-Berlin 2024/5 and artistic director of the Sonic Borderlines Listening Series.