Dieter Ammann’s turn to composition was preceded by a phase of musical practice on different instruments in a musical home, followed by school music studies and participation in several international bands as a at the Basel Music Academy (Roland Moser, Detlev Müller-Siemens) with masterclasses with Witold Lutoslawski, Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Schnebel, and Niccolo Castiglioni.
At 30, he definitely turnde to composition whereby the scrupulous and slowly probing work process can take two years or more to complete a commissioned work.

He has received numerous national and international awards for his meticulously notated chamber music and orchestral works, including work grants from the Aargau Kuratorium, the Canton of Lucerne, the Franz Liszt Scholarship from the “European Capital of Europe“ Foundation, the main prize from the IBLA Foundation New York (in honor of L. Berio) and the “Young composers in Europe“ competition (Leipzig), the Swiss Music Prize, the Ernst von Siemens Prize for Composition, the AZ-Media Prize for Culture, the UBS Cultural Foundation Prize and the Venice Residency of the Forberg Foundation and the Fondazione Castelforte.

Ammann is considered the most renowned Swiss composer of the middle generation. His orchestral works in particular are performed worldwide. He is also a much sought-after lecturer, for example, together with Wolfgang Rihm or Unsuk Chin, at the Composer Seminar of the Lucerne Festival Academy or the Impuls Academy Graz. He leads a composition class at the Lucerne University of the Arts and has lectured at the Bern University of the Arts. Masterclasses have taken him to the universities of Cologne, Weimar, Karlsruhe, St. Petersburg, New York University, Rosario, and La Plata, among others.

Ammann has received invitations as composer-in-residence to festivals such as the Davos Festival, Les Muséiques Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, the ReMusica Festival St. Petersburg, Tongyeong International Music Festival and the Weywuying Festival.
In addition to the renowned Swiss orchestras (Tonhalle, Philharmonia Zurich, Lucerne, Basel, Bern, Suisse Romande), his works have been performed by orchestras such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia London, Helsinki Philharmonic, Mariinsky Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, DSO Berlin, WDR, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Ensemble intercontemporain, Quatuor Diotima, Mondrian Ensemble, ensemble recherche, conducted by Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, Jonathan Nott, Baldur Brönnimann, Sylvain Cambreling, James Gaffigan, Valery Gergiev, Pablo Heras-Casado, Susanna Mälkki, Sakari Oramo, Matthias Pintscher, Emilio Pomarico, David Robertson, Peter Rundel, Michael Sanderling, Markus Stenz, Mario Venzago and many others.
Artists such as Carolin Widmann, Andreas Haefliger, Michael Barenboim, Tabea Zimmermann, Nils Mönkemeyer, and Maximilian Hornung interpret his solo pieces and concertos.

Ammann’s works are published by Bärenreiter Verlag and Swiss Music Edition SME/musinfo.ch

 

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