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4th time Gold in best company with Pharrell and Gorillaz for my music video Metamorphosis at the prestigious CLIO Awards. We won GOLD for innovation and two Bronze for fan engagement and collaboration. Thank you to tea company Hälssen & Lyon and Happy creative agency for making this incredible project possible.

This month my music was performed in Asia for the first time. Solo cellist Jan Vogler played the Cello Concerto at the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore with Singapore Symphony Orchestra and my choral cycle I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain was invited to Indonesia. In Kupang I had a moving performance together with the choir of Widya Mandira University.

Finally on vinyl! 10 years ago, my debut album Pocket Symphonies was released by Deutsche Grammophon and turned my life upside down. The music behind this oxymoron found many friends among you and let me perform it around the world. For the anniversary, we decided to produce a limited vinyl edition. You can get one with this link, starting May 19:

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I am honoured to be part of a commission for a collective requiem in memory of the 1989 revolution.
Seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe had experienced more or less violent revolutions in…

The year 2023 is here and I wish all my friends and listeners an inspired, healthy and happy new year!
It may be a bit much to ask, but I wish that we as human beings come to our senses, find peace, stop murdering each other and start tackling the most pressing issues regarding our environment.
The year will take me to many new cities and for the first time to Asia. My choral, orchestral and chamber music programmes have their first dates. I look forward to meeting you and exchanging ideas on these occasions. I wish you all the best!

Sven's still life Skills gave its name to the group exhibition Skills for Peace in Berlin. Curated by Constanze Kleiner, Stephan von Wiese and Daniel Marzona, the exhibition featured works by renowned international artists such as Gerhard Richter, William Kentridge, Tony Cragg, Katharina Sieverding, Stefan Rinck and more. It was a special honour to lead such an important group of artists with this work. Skills was shown as an exclusive print in the size 1,55 m x 1,10 m and has already been sold to an art collector. The edition consists of a total of 3 elaborately framed high-quality prints. If interested, please contact the Gallery, see below.

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Thank you Dresden for honoring me with the prestigious Art Prize 2022 by the City of Dresden. I feel deep gratitude for the acknowledgment of my work and for having an artistic home at this wonderful place at the river Elbe.

Since 1993, the City of Dresden has awarded an annual art prize and up to two promotional prizes to promising young artists, ensembles and cultural workers. In each case, outstanding and nationally significant artistic work or cultural commitment is honoured.

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My new album Skills is out today on Berlin label Modern Recordings.

In my parents' living room stands an elaborately hand-forged copper kettle – my grandfather's masterpiece, hammered out of a single piece of copper. Growing up in a family of craftsmen, I have been familiar since early childhood with the attitude of perfecting a thing for its own sake.

The deepening concentration and slow maturing of execution, the craft shares with spiritual rituals, with arts, sports and the sciences. I am touched by the sight of almost ideal expressions of human activity, be it a forged piece, a perfectly build sentence or an athletic performance. I dedicate my album SKILLS to this fascination.

The album is available on Vinyl, CD and on all streaming platforms.

Cover artwork: myself
String quartet: mondena quartet
French horns: Anne Grethen, Jörg Brückner, Robinson Wappler
Tuba: Tom Götze

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The 4^th single of my upcoming album Skills is out today. The music video shows a Reishi mushroom that is ‘eating’ a violin in time lapse – transforming it into a tea. The video deals with the constant transforming process. Even high culture can lose relevance and society’s interest and become just a soil for something very different.

A violin is the icon of a highly developed, sophisticated classical tradition.

The Reishi mushroom is a less developed organism, but it is providing countless health benefits, when eaten or drunk. The video is contemplating about the change of values, the need for renewal and regeneration and about hubris, that always comes before the fall.

Director: Daniel Farkas
Cover artwork: Dominik Schech

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Lore is the third single of my upcoming album Skills. It is about the influence of traditions on creative processes. As a continuum we ourselves have lost this in Germany. We subconsciously feel tradition and rub against it – we flee, long, renew, deny, nurture, destroy, transfigure it, but we will not be able to overcome its continuous background noise. As a surreal vanitas daydream, I have portrayed this silent presence of tradition in my music video Lore, inspired by Armenian director Parajanov’s movie The Color of Pomegranates.

Parajanov’s non-narrative fusion of hypnotic pictures mirrors the continuous impact of tradition in his cultural world. Saxon tradition and arts and crafts shaped my childhood. In my memories, my artistic thinking and my everyday life, they are fleetingly but continuously present ...

Repetition is the second single of Sven's upcoming album Skills. It features Chicago avantgarde sound artist Surachai. The visuals for Repetition are crafted by Polish video artist Ksawery Komputery. He created a machine learning algorithm, which is learning to draw a rose. The rose is the key visual element of Sven's new concept album.

Musicians on Repetition:

mondena quartet (strings)
Jörg Brückner (French Horn)
Robinson Wappler (French Horn)
Anne Grethen (French Horn)
Tom Götze (Tuba)

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Ksawery Komputery

Sven's first single Vision of his upcoming album Skills is out today via Berlin label Modern Recordings. The cover is handmade by the master engraver Matthias Köhler from Dresden. The album celebrates human crafts and innovation. The new music is composed for String quartet, French horns, Vibraphone and Electronics.

It features:

mondena quartet (strings)
Jörg Brückner (French Horn)
Robinson Wappler (French Horn)
Anne Grethen (French Horn)
Tom Götze (Tuba)

Listen to Vision
Watch music video

We finished the recording of 10 new pieces for the upcoming album Skills.
The new pieces are written for 3 French horns, Tuba and String quartet.
I had the pleasure to work again with Mondeana Quartet from Leipzig.
Among the wonderful brass players was Jörg Brückner, who is one of the best French horn players, I have ever heard.
I am now collecting ideas for the visual work, that will accompany the single releases and the live concerts. The Icelandic visual artis Mani M. Sigfusson will join the team once again, after our collaboration on I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain.
Thanks to a succesful Kickstarter campaign, I was able to make the most out of this Corona standstill. Thank you very much to all supporters! The releases of singles from the album will start end of September this year. The album has to wait until February 2022.

I just started a Crowdfunding campaign for my new album.
It will be called SKILLS. I would like to kindly ask you to become part of this new journey. This is, what SKILLS it is about:
I have always been fascinated, by human's ability to refine and master crafts –
sometimes to adapt to a changing world, sometimes to create art, sometimes just for its own sake. I dedicate SKILLS to this fascination.
Up until now we have been able to share our art thanks to the support of everyone, who has bought tickets to our concerts and listened to our music.
This musician-audience relationship has been an incredibly productive one throughout the past years, but this last year has highlighted that it is also a fragile one.
This is why we put SKILLS on the crowdfunding platform ‘Kickstarter’.
Please have a look and learn more about the idea behind it.
With your crucial help and involvement, we can realise it together, and I look forward very much to sharing it with you when it is complete.

Kickstarter 

To support those, who have been on the frontlines of the pandemic, the artists of the German booking agency Von der Haardt came together to deliver a compilation album with all proceeds being donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, an independent humanitarian non-profit organization that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare.
Being part of the Von der Haardt artist family, Sven delivers the piece "Blurred". It is a rework for string quartet of the original track by Icelandic duo Kiasmos.
The title name “Haingeraide” derives from the Middle Ages, when German farmers established “Haingeraide” as a form of forest and land management cooperative. With unity and collaboration at its core, there couldn’t be a better title for a project like this.

"Blurred" on YouTube
"Blurred" on Spotify

Today is the album release of the Cello Concerto Three Continents with soloist Jan Vogler and the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Macelaru. Composers Nico Muhly (USA), Zhou Long (China) and Sven Helbig each wrote one movement for the concerto that has been commissioned by Jan Vogler and the Dresden Music Festival. Sven composed the second movement Aria for the work.
“The music on this album deals with the role of artists within our society. Three Continents is a comment on the freedom of music as a global language that is yet passionately influenced by regional and cultural conditions. It is symbolic for everything that characterizes our globalized community.” says Jan Vogler.

SF Classical Voice – Review
The Classic Review
Jan Vogler
Klassik begeistert – Review

Pianist Clemens Christian Poetzsch released a new album with 12 of Sven's compositions for solo piano. The musical fellows started off playing music together in Dresden.
Being label mates at Berlin based brand Neue Meister, Clemens and Sven collaborated on this work, celebrating their common musical taste and their love for piano music.

Neue Meister
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Sven is honored to be a faculty member at Canada's Banff Center for Arts and Creativity. Along Sven's master classes during the Choral Art program, the center will stage his work I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain, calling it one of the most remarkable choir works of the 21st century.
Founded in 1933, the Banff Centre continues its worldwide unique role as a catalyst for knowledge and creativity through the power of its unique environment and facilities in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The Banff Centre aspires to be the global leader in the development and promotion of creative work in the arts, sciences, business, culture and the environment.

Banff Center
Program