Volker Straebel

Volker Straebel (born 1969) is a German musicologist and composer and performer of experimental music. Life Straebel grew up in Berlin (West) where he was born. He studied musicology, philosophy and library science at the Technische Universität Berlin and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Magister Artium). As music journalist, among others for Der Tagesspiegel (1996–2001) and the Berliner Seiten der Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2001–2002), he documented contemporary music and sound art in Berlin. In 2002–14 he was curatorial advisor to the festival MaerzMusik of the Berliner Festspiele. Between 2009 and 2014, he was head of the Electronic Studio at the Audio Communication Department of the Technische Universität Berlin. 2015 Straebel took over as head of the Master’s programme Sound Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin, which he fundamentally reformed in 2017 as Sound Studies and Sonic Arts. In 2020, he was named Dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music and Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Since 2026 he has been the head of the music archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. Straebel researches and publishes on