Flora Geißelbrecht & Milleflör & Friends

She began creating music at an early age: her first works were premiered at the IGNM series Youth Gives Young Music. She studied composition with Gerd Kühr at the KUG. In 2020 the Kontrapunkt performed their work “Rip in the Wallpaper”; Inspired by poems by Ute Schlerath, it tells a story: “What can I say about the piece? there is a crack in the wallpaper. behind it someone is playing music. on the other hand, people are still fading. the clock is ticking. looked behind the facade. you don't dare go to the other side. how long will the world stand? just keep calm. it is already falling from under our feet. More than a crack..."

She also studied composition pedagogy and viola with a focus on contemporary music. Scholarships from the City of Vienna and the SKE Fund, endowed awards, invitations to the European Forum Alpbach as a speaker and the opportunity to become an academic at the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt were career-promoting. In 2017 she was a finalist and recognition winner of the Vienna Film Music Prize, and in 2019 she won the Fidelio Competition in the “Creation” category as a viola player and composer in an interdisciplinary contribution.

Flora Geißelbrecht's political stance is manifested in a composition for the commemorative year 2014, when she sets texts by Nobel Peace Prize Prize winner Bertha von Suttner to music. She is lucky enough to be interpreted by the best like Anna Maria Pammer and Wolfgang Holzmair.

With the ensemble “Milleflör”, Flora Geißelbrecht and her sister Camilla perform pieces about culinary journeys into space, about a grotesquely sensual breakfast or murderous cucumber salad, and with Alpine Dweller she imagines Austrian folklore. (press release)

“Hello, I am Flora and I am an instrument” – these short words as a prelude to Flora Marlene Geißelbrecht’s solo program Viola and Voice, Sybils and Songs, presented in Berlin’s Villa Elisabeth, were not just a greeting, but also summed up the entire concept in a Viennese, casual way Point. The young Upper Austrian performs herself, her body, her voice and her hands become the musical tools with which the composing performer presents herself to her audience.

In the personal union of soprano and violist, the eponymous sibyls become the common thread from tongue-in-cheek crypticism to Dada jokes via virtuoso viola solos: in the form of their rousing original composition Im Schatten lingering, which combines a spoken poem from Geißelbrecht's pen with a surprisingly well-functioning hybrid of contemporary viola and snappy groove, or by works by Arlene Sierra, Sally Beamish, Giacinto Scelsi or the Phoenix by Rudolf Jungwirth, which was specially designed for her. But it is above all her own pieces - there was a setting of the Scherzo from Kurt Schwitter's Ursonata and the piece Scots&Ire - that were convincing and revealed the performer not only as a versatile instrument, but also as an artist who was impressively developed at a young age. (press release)

Following the International Achievement Award, which has been presented at the P&B since 2014, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the wonderful violist Flora Geißelbrecht will present herself solo, with Milleflör in a duo with her sister Camilla and with an improv set with various musical friends. Welcome to the club! Ch

Program and cast

Flora Geißelbrecht Solo
Flora Geißelbrecht: viola, vocals, harp

Milleflör
Flora Geißelbrecht: viola, vocals, harp
Camilla Geißelbrecht: cello, vocals, viola da gamba, ukulele

& Anna Sophia Defant: piano, Bernhard Hadriga: guitar, Tobias Pöcksteiner: bass, Raphael Schuster: drums