Sven Helbig

SVEN HELBIG grew up in Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany. He discovered classical music as a child, by chance, on one of the few stations his self-built radio could pick up. What began as a fascination with semiconductor circuits became the focus of his life: the medium-wave receiver as a window to the world. He lay awake for nights, listening to Brahms and Mahler. Sven Helbig began playing the clarinet with Puccini's Tosca. With Stan Lathan's Beat Street, the first film about hip-hop, drums were added. Stanley Kubrick's works ignited his passion for the medium of film, and in the scores of Richard Strauss and Wagner, he found the desire to compose. Everything seemed interconnected, leading to a yearning to unite his diverse interests and abilities. After studying music in Dresden, Sven Helbig moved to New York, playing drums in Greenwich Village clubs at night and working in a cowbell foundry in the Bronx during the day. The call to become a lecturer at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden and the opportunity to co-found and lead the Dresden Sinfoniker with friends brought him back to Germany. In the following years, Sven Helbig's work alternated between focused musical projects as a producer, such as the song cycle Mein Herz Brennt, the soundtrack to Battleship Potemkin, the ballet The Most Incredible Thing at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre, and large-scale multimedia events where he could often combine his own compositions with directing, such as the Skyscraper Symphony for Dresden's 800th-anniversary celebration or the choral work Da Wird Auch Dein Herz Sein for 250,000 voices for the Kirchentag 2011. Artists who have utilized his talents include Rammstein, the Pet Shop Boys, René Pape, the Fauré Quartett, and Snoop Dogg. In February 2013, Sven Helbig released his debut album Pocket Symphonies on the traditional label Deutsche Grammophon.