Iris ter Schiphorst

Iris ter Schiphorst (born 22 May 1956) is a German composer and musician.

Iris ter Schiphorst was born in Hamburg into a middle-class family, her father a Dutch technician and her mother a German pianist. She describes music as her "second mother tongue" ("zweite Muttersprache"). She began taking piano lessons, initially from her mother, after her early hopes of becoming a dancer were thwarted by injury.

She continued her piano studies at the Bremen Musikhochschule from 1973 to 1978, and embarked on a busy schedule of concert performances. She then spent two years (1978–1980) travelling in Europe and Africa, an experience that transformed her social and musical outlook. On returning to Germany she began playing in rock bands, including Bremen's all-female Seven Kick the Can. She remained active in rock music from 1980 to 1986, as keyboardist, bassist, drummer, and sound engineer.

ter Schiphorst moved to Berlin in 1984 and from 1986 studied humanities (theatre studies, cultural studies, and philosophy) at the Freie Universität Berlin, later transferring to Humboldt-Universität. She also attended seminars with composers Dieter Schnebel and Luigi Nono and musicologist Helga de la Motte-Haber, but is otherwise self-taught in composition.

ter Schiphorst's experience as a practising musician has been an important influence on her approach to composition. Her music is also informed by her abiding interest in dance.

She began experimenting with classical composition in the 1980s while still playing in rock bands. Early works include Terrible (1982) and Postludium aus Vergessenem (1985).

Later in the decade she co-founded the zeit-Musik collective of composers and musicologists, and concentrated on music exploring the relationship between text and sound. Works from this period include the radio pieces Inside-outside II (1989) and Und was, wenn die Schlange ein Schwein gewesen wäre? (1989).

Her interest in electronic music and sampling techniques led her to form the electro-acoustic ensemble Intrors in 1990, with whom she won the Blaue Brücke composition competition in 1997 for Silence Moves (1997; with Helmut Oehring) and made two recordings, Liebesgeschwüre im Schneckenhaus (1992) and Silence Moves und Anna's Wake (1999). She performed with Intrors on keyboards, synthesiser, and sampler through the 1990s, as well as continuing to give piano concerts.

At the same time, ter Schiphorst was developing an interest in writing for stage and multimedia performance. 1055, die Welt ist noch in Ordnung (1984) is an early example, but it was only in the nineties that this became a large part of her output, beginning with Strings (1991), Anna's Wake, and Z.B. Herz (both 1992).

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