Christine Fischer

Christine Fischer is artistic director of Musik der Jahrhunderte Stuttgart, manager of the Neue Vocalsolisten and artistic director of the New Music Festival ECLAT.

For over 30 years, she has shaped the contemporary music scene in the country and contributed to cultural policy debates. Through international co-productions, she provides impetus across a wide range of networks in the contemporary arts. For her, curating means facilitating, with the free development of individual artistic expression at the heart of her work. With a broad programmatic focus on the global development of music within the context of the contemporary arts, she particularly supports a young, interdisciplinary generation of artists.

In 1985, she took over the management of Musik der Jahrhunderte while still a music student and has since played a significant role in the development of the institution. Important milestones were the merger with the »Tage für Neue Musik« (now ECLAT) in 1989, the establishment of Musik der Jahrhunderte as an institution for new music, the move to the Theaterhaus am Pragsattel in 2003 with new working and performance venues, and the profiling of the Neue Vocalsolisten as the world’s leading special ensemble for vocal chamber music. As their manager, she maintains contacts with numerous event organizers and partner ensembles in Europe and around the world. The resulting cooperations and co-productions shape the concert series as well as the two festivals of Musik der Jahrhunderte, ECLAT and »Der Sommer in Stuttgart«.

In 2006 Christine Fischer was artistic director and chief organizer of the ISCM World New Music Festival, which Musik der Jahrhunderte organized for the International Society for New Music in Stuttgart.

Together with musicians and event organizers from the Stuttgart region, she founded Netzwerk Süd in 2007 as part of Netzwerk Neue Musik, a project of the German Federal Cultural Foundation that provided extensive funding for new music education projects in Germany until 2011. Within Netzwerk Süd, she was responsible for numerous projects in over 30 cities in the Stuttgart metropolitan region, culminating in the »Zukunftsmusik« festival, of which she was artistic director.

In 2012, Christine Fischer and her colleagues initiated the »Netzwerk Neue Musik Baden-Württemberg e.V.« (New Music Network Baden-Württemberg), which links new music players with cultural institutions and educational institutions throughout the state in the spirit of mediation, and of which she is the deputy chairwoman.

She has been artistic director of the ECLAT festival since 2014.

Since 2020, she has stepped up her support for artists in exile, particularly those from Belarus and other Eastern European countries threatened by autocratic regimes. In this context, she founded platformB in 2022, a digital space for production and discourse dedicated to the free development of the arts.

Christine Fischer’s cultural policy activities include consulting and lecturing on cultural management as well as serving on various advisory boards and juries, including the Artistic Advisory Board of the Beethoven Jubiläums GmbH BTHVN2020 and the Commissione consultiva of the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano.

For her contributions to art and culture in France and Germany, Christine Fischer was awarded the »Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres« by the French Minister of Culture in July 2011.