Martin Kohlstedt

Event information

Martin Kohlstedt is among the outstanding composers, pianists and producers for instrumental music and electronica. His past albums and their respective reworks were rewarded with international recognition and concert tours throughout the whole world.

With his live performances Kohlstedt sets standards on how cutting edge electronica production can intermingle with analogue and acoustic approaches ranging from classical piano and electronic music to ambient and field recordings in an effortless way. Kohlstedt intuitively combines inspirations and influences from fundamentally different worlds and soundscapes into a unique musical amalgam and forms it into something that feels more like a living body than a list of pieces. An immersive live experience.

He describes his style of work as modular composition; his pieces are always in movement and never resort to a definitive form – even during concerts. Improvisation is an important part of his creative process, and so are the interaction with his audience on equal footing, the courage and sometimes audacity to fail and the interaction with people, space and context.

For this Martin Kohlstedt collaborated with renowned partners such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus choir and artists like Douglas Dare, Sudan Archives, Henrik Schwarz, among others, as well as labels like Warner Classics. Apart from his own compositions Kohlstedt writes music and scores for movies, plays, podcasts and audiobooks. Under the name of «Edition Kohlstedt» he runs his own label and tries to do justice to his responsibilities as an international artist with a reforestation project close to his birthplace.

This will be one of the first public concerts in St Michael’s since its recent re-opening, having been closed since 2004. The Roman Catholic church was founded in 1859 and became the heart of the Little Italy Community in Ancoats.

AGE RESTRICTION: This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.