New location for artistic-scientific transfer

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Grand opening of the ligeti center in Harburg

The vision of the “ligeti zentrum” is becoming a reality: Today marked the grand opening of the new transfer center in Harburg. The new facility is a transdisciplinary collaborative project between the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT), the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). On the ninth and tenth floors of the Kaispeicher on Veritaskai, some 30 people from the fields of research, art, medicine, education, and engineering will collaborate across disciplines in offices and laboratories spanning 880 square meters. Through dialogue with society, culture, and business, the center aims to break new ground in designing products and concepts at the intersection of art, science, and technology—concepts that will find their way into society through public presentation.

Katharina Fegebank, Senator for Science: “In May, György Ligeti would have turned 100—and the city can celebrate the opening of the ligeti center on his birthday. This very special transfer center will provide new impetus both for the cultural and creative industries and for our social development. The idea behind the center draws on Ligeti’s inexhaustible curiosity, making it an ideal place to collaboratively develop ideas for the future from the perspectives of various disciplines. This project is also unique because the HfMT, the HAW, the TUHH, and the UKE have jointly established this interdisciplinary transfer center, thereby demonstrating the enormous potential for cooperation in Hamburg as a hub of science. The Ligeti Center stands for innovation at universities and is a great asset to our city!”

Prof. Dr. Jan Philipp Sprick, President of the HfMT: “The opening of the ligeti center marks a turning point in the history of the HfMT Hamburg. Its impact extends throughout the landscape of German-speaking music and theater colleges—and, thanks to the center’s international orientation, far beyond. The collaboration with TUHH, HAW, and UKE brings topics and content to our university that will have a lasting impact on our understanding of what defines a music and theater university in the 21st century. I warmly congratulate Prof. Dr. Georg Hajdu and the entire ligeti zentrum team on this tremendous success.”

Prof. Dr. Georg Hajdu, Director of the ligeti zentrum: “With the opening of the ligeti center, the dream of a great visionary of contemporary music is coming true. György Ligeti, world-famous for his music for Stanley Kubrick’s *2001 A Space Odyssey,” served as a professor of composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama, where he championed transdisciplinary thinking—an approach he had already sought to realize in the Hanseatic city as early as the 1970s through a center for computer music. This year, it finally became a reality in a contemporary, community-oriented way, with the involvement of the HAW, the TUHH, and the UKE.”

Background:
The Ligeti Center will be funded from 2023 to 2027 by the BMBF and the GWK as part of the federal-state initiative “Innovative University.” The new transfer center is named after the composer György Ligeti, who was a professor of composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater (HfMT) from 1973 to 1988 and is considered one of the most famous composers of the 20th century. He was interested in a broad spectrum of artistic, cultural, and scientific topics. The composer, who passed away on June 12, 2006, would have turned 100 this year. To mark this occasion, the HfMT is hosting a Ligeti Festival from May 2 to 7, 2023, featuring numerous informative events, concerts, and installations, and cordially invites you to attend.

You can find the festival program here