Biography English

Sarah Maria Sun is known as one of the foremost and most extraordinary performers in the contemporary music scene. Her repertoire currently spans around 2000 compositions from the 16th to the 21st century, including 400 world premieres.

Sarah Maria Sun regularly performs as a soloist in concert halls and festivals such as the KKL Luzern, Suntory Hall Tokyo, the Muziekgebow Amsterdam, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Auditorio National Madrid, the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonic, the Biennale Paris, Venice and Munich, the Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna and famous festivals in Witten, Donaueschingen, Herrenhausen and Cervantino and Vertice in Mexico.

Her tremendous adaptability is demonstrated on a regular basis on the music-theater stage. She has appeared at the opera houses in Zurich, Basel, Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Leipzig, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Zagreb, and the Opéra Bastille and the Opéra Comique in Paris. 

She shows her skill for haunting theatrical and musical interpretation time and again in the depiction of complex female figures. For her performances as Elsa/Lohengrin (Lohengrin by Salvatore Sciarrino, Salzburg Easter Festival 2017) and as Gwen (Psychoses 4.48 by Philip Venables, Semper Zwei Dresden 2019) she was nominated as singer of the year.

Sarah Maria Sun has performed with conductors such as François Xavier Roth, Sir Simon Rattle, Ingo Metzmacher, Kent Nagano, Alan Gilbert, Thomas Hengelbrock, Susanna Mälkki, Peter Rundel, Heinz Holliger, together with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the North, Bavarian, South-West and West German Radio Orchestras, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Antwerp and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras and ensembles such as musikFabrik Köln, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Mosaik, Ensemble Intercontemporain as well as the string quartets Diotima, Arditti, Minguet and Signum.

From 2007-2014, she was the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a chamber ensemble of seven singers that has been one of the world’s leading pioneers of contemporary music for decades.

Sarah Maria Sun’s discography includes more than 40 CDs, many of which have been awarded with and nominated for prizes. Sarah is also an illustrator and author of children’s books and releases songs with the band Titillating Tofu.

She regularly gives masterclasses for vocal music from the 20th and 21st centuries; she has taught at universities and conservatoires in Oslo, Harvard, Chicago, Stockholm, Zurich, Bale, Rostock, Moscow, Dresden, Hannover, Graz or Berlin. In 2018 she was guest professor at the Musikhochschule Hannover. 2019-2022 she worked as a guest professor, tutor and lecturer at the music universities of Hannover, Graz and Lucerne. 2022 she started working as a Professor for Contemporary Music at the Musikhochschule Basel, Switzerland.

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