Biography Christiane Strothmann

(back)

Christiane Strothmann was born in 1976 in Kiel, capital of the most Northern federal state of Germany, directly at the Baltic Sea.
At age seven she moved with her mother and stepfather to Ruhr area, the main industrial part of Germany in the West of the country, close to the Dutch border. There she began her musical and academic education.

She started playing the piano at age five and got her basic education in classical European music during childhood and youth.

After school she studied philology at Bochum Ruhr University particularly focusing on the field of language acquisition, intercultural communication, and issues of migration, identity and cultural exchange.
In 2004 she completed her studies and was given a masters degree of philology.
While still a student she started to work as a teacher of German language for immigrants.

At the same time she composed and performed as a pop and rock singer-songwriter, composed music for piano, worked with dancers, assisted in choirs and led several musical projects with pupils from high school.

At age 30 she decided to go back to university to deepen her artistic and technical skills as a composer of contemporary electronic sound art.
She was accepted at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and got her masters degree in music as a composer for electroacoustic music in 2013.

During her studies in Essen she was also allowed to deepen her engagement with musicological and ethnomusicological questions.

Since October 2016 she has been working at „Institute for Computer Music and Electronic Media“ (ICEM) at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in the position of an Artist in Progress. She will work on her two-years project „The Five Elements – Electroacoustics meets Bön“ until December 2018.