Aleksander Gabryś

Composer

As a composer, Gabryś creates instrumental, vocal, orchestral, electronic and stage-related works. His music often moves beyond the traditional concert format, combining live performance with electronics, spatial concepts, video, text, gesture and elements of paratheatre.

Works connected to Basel, his adopted city, include Bas-el-Karneval for computer, Bas-El and Basilesia for the Camerata Silesia vocal ensemble. His works also include Donquixoterie, elUle, Bestiarium – Fortune Square trio tripSinfAct, Walser Code, metAtem, BASSBOXTRING, PrāṇāhTron, 2-Pol-Run, ILINX, PARTITURA, Natural Born Rebels, MANIFESTO PLAYBOX, nevermore and ±∞.

Double bassist

As a double bassist, Gabryś is closely connected with contemporary music and with the expansion of the repertoire for his instrument. More than one hundred works have been written and dedicated to him as a double bass soloist, including solo pieces and concertos with orchestra or ensemble.

Among the composers who have written for him or whose works he has premiered are Ryszard Gabryś, Helmut Oehring, Ulrich Krieger, Douglas McCausland, Edward Bogusławski, Thomas Kessler, Krzysztof Knittel, Junghae Lee, Michel Roth, Nicolas Tzortzis, Erik Ulman, Aram Hovhannisyan, Jevgenij Iršai, Ryszard Klisowski, Piotr Radko, Thomas Wally, Emre Sihan Kaleli and Zbigniew Karkowski.

Paratheatre / stage / media

A paratheatrical dimension runs through many of his works and solo performances. Music is frequently treated as embodied action, sonic theatre or one-person drama, with the physical presence of the musician becoming part of the work.

This field connects composition, performance, absurdity, ritual, literature and the visible effort of playing. Live electronics, film, tape, text and creative mixing appear as materials in the same larger stage situation.

Premieres and dedications

In his activity as an interpreter, Gabryś premiered Gérard Grisey's Échanges for double bass and piano at the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The work had long remained in manuscript before entering public musical life through this performance.

He has also performed Klaus Huber's double bass concerto, Erinnere dich an G., on numerous occasions, including performances with Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva. These activities connect his double bass practice with the creation and transmission of new repertoire, not only its interpretation.

Ensembles and collaborations

As a soloist, Gabryś has appeared with Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica, and with orchestras and ensembles including the former SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Filharmonia Zielonogórska, Camerata Impuls, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Filharmonia Śląska, Śląska Orkiestra Kameralna, and NOSPR — the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice.

His chamber work also includes repeated quintet performances with cellist Sol Gabetta.

As a soloist and ensemble musician, he has worked for many years with Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Klangforum Wien and Ensemble Modern, and has also appeared as a guest with Collegium Novum Zürich and, over a span of about 20 years, the österreichisches ensemble für neue musik Salzburg. His collaboration with Collegium Novum Zürich extended from 2001 to 2026, most recently with the February 2026 premiere of Heinz Holliger’s «Doppelspiegel» under Holliger’s direction, alongside György Kurtág’s «Schatten» for double bass and piano and Sándor Veress’s «Memento» for double bass and viola. In summer 2010, as an invited guest of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse final concert, he formed Trio Basso for performances in the Orangerie Darmstadt and in the main hall of the Staatstheater Darmstadt. His concert activity has taken him across much of Europe and both American continents, including Vienna, Amsterdam, Zürich, Paris, Moscow, New York, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, San Francisco, Cape Town, Montevideo, Tbilisi, Warsaw, Nairobi, Gothenburg, Berlin, Rome, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, La Biennale di Venezia, MaerzMusik, Ultraschall Berlin, Wien Modern and Warsaw Autumn.

Recordings

His recordings keep both his solo double bass work and his long-standing engagement with contemporary chamber music available to revisit. The double album Bassolo. XXth & XXIst Centuries' Contrabass Music presents modern and contemporary music for double bass.

He also appears on recordings with Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Klangforum Wien and other ensembles, in repertoire ranging from Giacinto Scelsi and Bernhard Lang to Polish and Swiss contemporary music.

Teaching

In 2020 Gabryś was invited to Stanford University in California, where he led a course in performance and composition and presented a solo recital at CCRMA.

This teaching context reflects a recurring aspect of his work: the crossing of performer and composer, notation and improvisation, instrument and body, concert and theatre.

Current work

Recent large-scale works include The Beelzebub Sonata, freely based on Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz's play, and Rio, my Rio, a concerto for solo double bass and ensemble.

Rio, my Rio was premiered on 13 December 2025 at Gare du Nord, Basel, with Ensemble Phoenix Basel under the musical direction of Jürg Henneberger, with Gabryś as double bass soloist. The work sits beside literature-based music theatre and paratheatrical stage work in the current shape of his practice.