To call Salome Kammer a great singer would be an understatement. In fact, she is a phenomenal
vocal acrobat who knows no limits between speaking and singing, humour and solemnity.
(Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Salome Kammer’s talent transcends musical boundaries. Her repertoire defies categorisation and is
comprised of a mix of avant-garde music, virtuoso voice experiments, classical melodrama, lieder
recitals, dada poetry and Broadway songs. Whether performing as a singing actress or as an acting
singer, Kammer’s stage presence in musical cabaret and theatre roles is fascinating. Numerous
contemporary music works have been dedicated to and premiered by her, both nationally and
internationally. Composers such as Helmut Oehring, Wolfgang Rihm, Georges Aperghis, Bernhard
Lang, Luca Lombardi and Jörg Widmann have dedicated works to her, inspired by the manifold facets
of her voice and her exceptional expressiveness.
Salome Kammer studied music from 1977 to 1984, majoring in cello and studying with Maria Kliegel
and Janos Starker in Essen. In 1983, she was engaged at the Heidelberg Theatre appearing in
countless plays, musicals, and operettas. In 1988, she moved to Munich to begin filming Die zweite
Heimat with director Edgar Reitz. While working on this monumental film project, she began her formal
vocal training, taking lessons from teachers such as Yaron Windmüller. She has been performing as a
vocal soloist in contemporary music concerts since 1990. Heimat 3, the next part of the Heimat series
which was premiered in Venice in 2004 and broadcast throughout Europe, also allowed her to exhibit
the breadth of her abilities in the role of Clarissa.
Her wide-ranging repertoire includes classics of modern music such as Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire
and String Quartet No. 2, Seven Deadly Sins by Weill, La fabricca illuminata by Nono, works by
composers such as Cage, Berio, Zender, Rihm and Kurtág, Weill and Eisler Lieder, and the role of
Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Because of her expertise in interpreting Kurt Weill’s music, Salome
Kammer has been invited to appear at the Rheingau Music Festival and at the Kurt Weill Fest Dessau.
She is also a regular guest at the Beethovenfest Bonn, most recently in 2012 in Schönberg’s
Gurre-Lieder. For the first time in Japan, she gave several recitals and a master class at the invitation
of the Goethe Institute in June 2013.
Salome Kammer has wowed audiences in numerous productions of new operas including Helmut
Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern at the Stuttgart Opera and the Opéra National
de Paris, Jörg Widmann’s Das Gesicht im Spiegel at the Bavarian State Opera, and Isabel Mundry’s
Die Odyssee – Ein Atemzug at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She sang in Peter Eötvös’s Lady Sarashina
at the Opéra national de Lyon, the Opéra Comique Paris and at the Polish National Opera in Warsaw
to great critical acclaim, as well as in Ligeti’s Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures in Munich. She
performed Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments with violinist Carolin Widmann in Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin, Oslo,
Salzburg and Milano and sang Brice Pauset’s solo work Exercices du Silence at the Berlin State
Opera in 2011. In January 2014, she made her successful debut as Elsa in Sciarrino’s chamber opera
Lohengrin.
Numerous radio and CD productions document Salome Kammer’s exceptional talent, among them a
recording of Schoenberg’s Jakobsleiter (Harmonia Mundi) as well as Lachenmann’s Mädchen mit den
Schwefelhölzern (Kairos). Her CDs I hate music, but I like to sing (Capriccio) with works by
Schoenberg, Weill, Bernstein and Britten amongst others, and salomix-max (wergo) received rave
reviews, as well as her recent album I’m a Stranger Here Myself, featuring music by the exiled
composers Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler.
In the 2014/15 season, Salome Kammer will appear alongside Daan Vandewalle at the Ghent Festival
of Flanders in De Handelsbeurs interpreting lieder by composers such as Eisler, Berg, Scriabin and
Schwitters, The duo also has been invited to the Concertgebouw Brugge. She will give the world premieres
of works by Richard Rijnvos and Seung-Ah Oh at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ as part of the Cello Biennale
Amsterdam, and will once again perform with the Ensemble Contrechamps with Zender’s Cabaret Voltaire
and Schönberg’s Brettl-Lieder.
Salome Kammer teaches Theory and Performance of Contemporary Music at the Munich
Conservatory.