The composer and jazz guitarist Matthias Ockert was born in the Lake Constance region of Germany in 1970. He first earned a degree in architecture at Berlin Technical University while taking lessons in composition and music theory with Carlo Inderhees. He then went on to study composition with Wolfgang Rihm, Sandeep Bhagwati, and Hanspeter Kyburz in Karlsruhe and Berlin and jazz guitar with Attila Zoller and Bill Connors during his regular visits to New York.

Ockert’s oeuvre includes instrumental and electronic music, jazz, multimedia, sound installations, and stage works, such as his opera Bibliothek von Babel (The Library of Babel) after Jorge Luis Borges, written for the Munich Biennale, or Xanthopsia for the ballet of the Baden State Theater in Karlsruhe. His music is noteworthy for its use of electric guitar, interactive electronics, improvisation, and a special focus on the compositional integration of spatial acoustics. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.