Nikolaus Brass was born in Lindau am Bodensee in 1949. He initially studied medicine in Munich, Glasgow, and Berlin. Concurrently, he pursued compositional studies in Munich, Berlin, and Hanover. He worked for many years as an editor for a medical-scientific publishing house. His works have been performed at national and international festivals for new music since the 1980s. Numerous radio productions of his works and CD releases, as well as features about his music, have been broadcast by various radio stations. His extensive catalogue includes vocal, orchestral, and chamber music, and in recent years, music for the theatre: Sommertag (Munich Biennale 2014, Ultraschall 2015, new production at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden 2018) and Die Vorübergehenden (Bavarian State Opera 2018). In addition to pure orchestral works, he has composed numerous pieces for voice(s) in various settings. In 2019, he created the composition Wieviel Heimat braucht der Mensch for speaker and orchestra, commissioned by the ORF, with the eponymous text by Jean Améry. During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020/21, he composed SEI SOLO–coronaseries: Six Partitas for Solo Violin. Commissioned by musica viva, Brass is writing In der Farbe von Erde for viola, 44 strings, and 2 percussionists (scheduled premiere February 2023). Besides his compositional work, he has published extensively in journals and contributed essays for Bayerischer Rundfunk. In 2019, Schott published Nikolaus Brass: Texte–Gespräche, Essays, Werkkommentare. Brass has been a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts since 2014, Director of its Music Department since 2021, and a member of the Sudeten German Academy of Sciences and Arts since 2018. Since 2019, Brass has been a member of the advisory board of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Brass has lived in his birthplace, Lindau am Bodensee, since 2017.