Salome Kammer - voice

„To call Salome Kammer a great singer would be an understatement. In fact, she is a phenomenal vocal acrobat that knows no limits between speaking and singing, humour and solemnity."
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 2009)

Salome Kammer's all-round talent transcends musical boundaries. Her repertoire cannot be defined by categories. It comprises avant-garde, virtuoso voice experiments, classical melodrama, Lieder recitals, dada lyrics, jazz and Broadway songs. Her charisma as singing actress or acting singer is equally fascinating in musical cabaret and theatre roles. Numerous contemporary music works were dedicated to and premiered by her, both nationally and internationally. Composers such as Helmut Oehring, Wolfgang Rihm, Isabel Mundry, Bernhard Lang, Luca Lombardi or Jörg Widmann have written for Salome Kammer, who inspires with her exceptional variety of expression and the unlimited facets of her voice.

Salome Kammer studied music from 1977 to 1984, particularly focusing on her cello studies with Maria Kliegel and Janos Starker in Essen. In 1983, she was engaged by the Heidelberg Theatre, where she appeared as actress in classic theatre, musicals, operettas and young people's theatre. In 1988, she moved to Munich to begin filming Die zweite Heimat with director Edgar Reitz. While working on this monumental film project, she began to take voice lessons with Yaron Windmüller and others, and since 1990 she has been performing as a vocal soloist in contemporary music concerts. Heimat 3, which was premiered in Venice in 2004 and broadcast throughout Europe, shows the breadth of Salome Kammer's mastery in the role of Clarissa.

Her wide-ranging repertoire includes classics of modern music such as Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire and his string quartet No. 2, Die sieben Todsünden by Weill, La fabricca illuminata by Nono as well as works by composers such as Cage, Berio, Zender, Rihm and Kurtag, but also Brecht and Eisler Lieder recitals and the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Salome Kammer successfully performed in numerous productions of new operas, including Helmut Lachenmann's Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern at the Staatstheater Stuttgart and the Opéra National de Paris, Jörg Widmann's Das Gesicht im Spiegel at the Bayerische Staatsoper in 2003, Isabel Mundry's Die Odyssee - Ein Atemzug at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Bernhard Lang's I hate Mozart at Theatre an der Wien. She stunned the audience in Georges Aperghis's Zeugen which was premiered at Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik 2007 and in Peter Eötvös's Lady Sarashina at the Opera National de Lyon in March 2008 and at the Opéra comique Paris in 2009. In the 2008/2009 season, she performed Ligeti's Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures in Munich and made her debut at the Rheingau Musik Festival with a Kurt Weill recital.

In the current season, Salome Kammer can be heard at various venues with the whole range of her repertoire. After opening the season with the Austrian Ensemble for New Music at the Bregenz Festival, she performed music from the past decade at the Beethovenfest Bonn as part of a concert series focused on the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany. At the New Year's Eve concert of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under the direction of Ingo Metzmacher which will also feature artists from Circus Roncalli, she will sing at the Tempodrom in Berlin. In January 2010 she appears in Paris together with Carolin Widmann in Antoine Gindt's production of Kurtág's Kafka Fragmente which had already been shown to great success in Strasbourg and Paris. Together with Ensemble Modern she will perform both Weill's Mahagonny-Songspiel and the premiere of Helmuth Oehring's composition Die WUNDE Heine in Februaryat the Kurt Weill Fest in Dessau

Numerous radio and CD productions document Salome Kammer's exceptional talent, among them a recording of Schönberg's Jakobsleiter for Harmonia Mundi as well as Lachenmann's Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern for Kairos. Her recent CDs I hate music, but I like to sing (released on Capriccio) with works by Schönberg, Weill, Bernstein and Britten amongst others, and salomix-max (wergo) received rave reviews. Salome Kammer teaches Theory and Practice of Contemporary Music Performance at the Munich Conservatory.