Friedrich Heinrich Kern

Friedrich Heinrich Kern (born March 19, 1980 in Ludwigshafen) is a German composer, pianist, and glass harmonica player. Kern began his studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim where he graduated with a Diplom in Music Composition and Piano. His principal teachers included Ulrich Leyendecker and Sidney Corbett. Additionally, he spent one year studying traditional Korean music at Seoul National University. In 2007, he was a visiting composer at Wesleyan University. From 2008, Kern studied in New York with Matthias Pintscher and Louis Karchin. He received a MacCracken Research Fellowship and now teaches at New York University. Over the past 20 years, Kern has composed and produced hundreds of new compositions and dozens of new works. He has made lauded appearances as performer and composer in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In addition to his work with electronic instruments and media, Kern has composed works for acoustic instrumentations, ranging from soloist to full orchestra. Friedrich Heinrich Kern published his dissertation, entitled An Exploration of Compositional Technique in the Operas of Kaaija Saariaho and Christian Jost, in 2016. He teaches a composition class at New York University, where he earned a PhD, and is based in New York City.