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Biography

*15 Jun 1937 Saarbrücken

Rolf Riehm was born in 1937 in Saarbrücken. Initially he studied music education in Frankfurt, and from 1958 composition with Wolfgang Fortner in Freiburg. Subsequently active as a solo oboist (e.g. with Ungebräuchliches at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses in 1966).

Riehm is a co-founder of the Frankfurt Music Society, which existed from 1964 to 1970. After teaching briefly in schools, from 1968 he taught at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne, where he was also a member of “Gruppe 8”, a Cologne composers’ collective, till 1972. In 1968 he was awarded the “Premio Marzotto per la Musica” and a Villa Massimo scholarship that enabled him to spend some time in Rome.

From 1974 to 2000 Rolf Riehm was Professor of Composition und Harmony at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule. From 1976 to 1981 he was a member of the legendary “So-Called Radical Leftist Wind Orchestra”in Frankfurt. Concert tours, lectures and workshops took him to Sweden, mid- and South America, Japan and elsewhere. In 1992 he received the Saarland Art Prize, and 2002 the town of Hanau’s Hindemith Prize.

In spring 2010 Rolf Riehm was elected as a member of the Berliner Akademie der Künste. At the moment he composes a new opera (world premiere in Frankfurt, dec. 2013).