Flora Geißelbrecht, Viola

Flora Geißelbrecht is an Austrian performer and composer. Her special interest lies in the music of our time and the musical and interdisciplinary interaction. She completed her studies in composition, composition pedagogy and viola at the Graz University of the Arts and the Vienna University of Music and the Arts.
In 2014 she won the composition competition of the Academia Allegro Vivo and INÖK (Interest Group of Lower Austrian Composers), dedicated to the centenary of the Austrian Nobel Peace Prize winner Bertha von Suttner by setting her words to music. In 2017 she was, with Tahir Ibishov, a finalist and recognition award winner of the Vienna Film Music Award. In 2019 she won the Viennese Fidelio Competition in the category »Creation« as a composer and violist in an interdisciplinary performance.
Her works have been commissioned and premiered by performers, ensembles and festivals such as Anna Maria Pammer, Wolfgang Holzmair, Ensemble Kontrapunkte, Ensemble Reconsil, Ensemble CrossNova and the Styriarte Festival.
As a violist, she has repeatedly performed as a soloist at the Wien Modern Festival and with chamber music at the Unsafe and Sounds Festival, Impuls Festival and Wiener Festwochen. In 2019 she took part in the European Forum Alpbach as an arts fellow and gave a talk on ›The performer as part of the inventive circuit – pros and cons of the freedom of the performer‹ at the annual conference of the Austrian Society for Musicology.
During and after the lockdown in 2020, she developed her first solo programme, which includes only her own compositions for viola and voice. In it, Flora Geißelbrecht merges her various knowledge and skills in New Music, folk, jazz, improvisation, composition and poetry in a very personal performance. Parts of the programme have already been performed at the European Forum Alpbach 2019 and Forum Lockenhaus 2020.
Flora Geißelbrecht is a member of the imaginary-folk-trio Alpine Dweller (New Austrian Sound of Music Ensemble 2018/19) and the duos Milleflör and Mädel und Wiesel as violist, harpist, vocalist, composer and lyricist.