Stefan Hippe | Composers

Stefan Hippe was born in Nuremberg where he also studied music (accordion with Willi Münch and Prof. Irene Urbach) as well as at the Würzburg University of Music (composition with Berthold Hummel and Heinz Winbeck, and in addition to that conducting with Günther Wich). He was awarded several prizes for his more than 100 works among which there was a first prize for his second string quartet at the International Composition Contest of the Sommerliche Musikakademie Hitzacker (Summer Academy of Music, Hitzacker) in 1994. In addition, around 80 arrangements for accordion orchestras and other ensembles form another focus of his work. In 1997 he was granted a six-months scholarship at the “Cité international des Arts” in Paris. In 1998 he won the Kulturförderpreis (Prize for Cultural Promotion) of the city of Nuremberg and in 200 he won a Bavarian prize for jung artists. In the same year his opera “A Lady Di es” was premiered at Nuremberg’s Tafelhalle. This opera was a commissioned work to celebrate the 950th anniversary of that city. In addition to that he was awarded the promotional prize of district of Central Franconia and the promotional gift of the Lake of Constance International Conference in Zurich. As a soloist, member of an ensemble and conductor, he has taken part in numerous performances (including more than 90 world premieres) of contemporary music. Concert tours have also taken him to Hungary, Poland, Greece, France, the Czech Republic, Canada, the USA, Russia and Belarus.

Since 1999 he has been teaching accordion and composition at the music school in Nuremberg. From 2015 to 2021 he was a lecturer in conducting and conductor of the seminar orchestra at the HOHNER Conservatory in Trossingen. From 2009 to 2020 he volunteered as a federal conductor in the German Harmonica Association (DHV) and has conducted the federal accordion orchestra he founded there every two years since 2010. He has been deputy headmaster at the Nuremberg Music School since 2021 and is rebuilding the symphonic Nuremberg Youth Orchestra there.