Stefan Hakenberg

Who is Stefan Hakenberg?

Born in Wuppertal, Germany, composer Stefan Hakenberg now resides in Juneau, Alaska. Reviewers have praised his music as "highly original," "dramatic and memorable," "creating strong musical expressions in a densely contrapuntal style." The integration of players of non-western classical background has particularly shaped Hakenberg's creative thought. His work is an ongoing reflection on musical styles of today that he finds along an international career path that has taken him from Cologne in the 80s to Boston in the 90s to Seoul at the turn of the millennium.

Stefan Hakenberg counts Hans Werner Henze, Bernard Rands, Mario Davidovsky and Oliver Knussen amongst his teachers. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Stefan Hakenberg together with his wife, kayagum player Jocelyn Clark, founded the Alaskan contemporary music organization "CrossSound," which won an ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming, and received an NEA Creativity Grant for a program including Hakenberg's pansori “Klanott and the Land Otter People.”