Eva Zöllner and Heather Roche are known for their unique and versatile approaches to their respective instruments, the accordion and clarinet(s). Their innovative and experimental performances have garnered them a reputation as two of the most exciting and adaptable voices in contemporary music. The duo's commitment to collaboration with composers from diverse cultural backgrounds is a hallmark of their work. In 2025 they launch the second addition of their international composers´ lab that offers three composers the opportunity to work closely with the duo and have their pieces performed on a concert tour in Germany in October 2025. Find a documentary about the ZRD composers´lab 2023 here

 

Congratulations to our winners of this year's edition - Annegret Mayer-Lindenberg, Jonah Nuoja Luo Haven, Melissa Vargas and Luke Nickel. 

 

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Jonah Nuoja Luo Haven is a composer, improviser, and pianist. Driven by writers of Auto-theory, he composes as a way of bearing loose witness to life—an expression of aging. His music has been performed throughout Europe, the US, the UK, Russia, China, and Taiwan. He was awarded the 2025 Luciano Berio Rome Prize in Musical Composition, a 2024-25 DAAD One-Year Research Grant, the 2021 I Creation/Mivos Prize for Chinese Composers, the 2018 Bernd-Alois-Zimmermann Composition Prize of the City of Cologne, an Edition Zeitgenössische Musik Portrait CD, and won first prize in loadbang's 2023 International Composition Competition, the 2021 International Acht Brücken Composition Competition, and in the 2020 Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik Commission Competition, among others.

Haven's debut portrait CD gasser (released in September 2023 on Wergo) was nominated for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

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Melissa Vargas. Colombian composer and improviser. Her sound world explores interconnectedness, austerity, different approaches to the perception of temporality, and the expansion of gesture. Her works have been presented in many places of the Americas and Europe. She is the director of the Women in New Music Festival (FMMN) and the <libres en el sonido> concert cycle. She researches women composers in Latin America and, as part of CCMC, is in charge of the radio program "Inmerso" on RadioUNAL. She is a member of the collectives mygla, redCLa, and músicas libres.

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Luke Nickel (b. 1988) is an award-winning Canadian interdisciplinary artist, composer, and researcher currently living in Berlin, Germany. His works knot together themes of memory, transcription, translation, queer identity, technology, and impossible roller coasters. In addition to orally-transmitted music compositions, he creates traditionally-notated musical works, audiovisual performances, installations, videos, and texts. He has created work with internationally-established soloists and chamber ensembles such as Mira Benjamin, Zubin Kanga, Quatuor Bozzini, and EXAUDI. He has created work with visual and multimedia artists such as Freya Olafson and Beth Frey. About his work, Jennie Gottschalk writes: “...there is an unusual quality of rawness. The players are participating in an oral, folkloric tradition without any sense of irony or flippancy” (Experimental Music Since 1970)..

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Annegret Mayer-Lindenberg is a violin maker, a musician and a composer. She plays violaand viola d'amore, among others as a member of Ensemble Garage and Kammerelektronik,mainly chamber music and often in collaboration with composers. In her compositions, shetries to create spaces for listening, but also to negotiate social issues or refer to traditionalhandicraft techniques.

The Composers´ Lab 2025 is a cooperation between the Zöllner-Roche-Duo and Künstlerhaus Lauenburg
and is kindly supported by Musikfonds e.V.

 

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