Aleksander Gabryś Composer / Solo Double Bassist

Biography

Aleksander Gabryś

Composer and solo double bassist from Silesia, based in Basel.

  • composer
  • double bassist
  • performer
  • creative artist

A composer and solo double bassist working across contemporary music, instrumental theatre, live electronics, film and polymedial forms.

Short biography

For programmes, festivals, ensembles, curators and press.

Born in Siemianowice Śląskie and raised between Tychy and Katowice, Aleksander Gabryś is a composer and solo double bassist based in Basel. He studied at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice and later at the Music Academy in Basel, where he settled in 1999. Since 2001 he has worked with Ensemble Phoenix Basel as a solo double bassist. His practice connects two closely related fields: composition, often extending into stage, media and paratheatrical forms, and the performance of contemporary double bass repertoire. His catalogue includes instrumental, vocal, orchestral, electronic and stage-related works, with recurring use of live electronics, text, gesture, video and spatial situations. As a double bassist he has premiered dedicated works and appeared with ensembles including Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Phoenix Basel and Ensemble Contrechamps. In 2020 he was invited to Stanford University / CCRMA for teaching and a solo recital.

Full biography

A vertical biography with branches into the artistic fields.

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 catalogue also includes 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 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 long-term collaborations include Klangforum Wien and Ensemble Modern, alongside concert activity across much of Europe and both American continents. Cities and festivals named in the source biography include 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 discography documents both solo double bass work and long-standing engagement with contemporary chamber music. 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 projects

Recent large-scale projects include Die Beelzebub Sonate, freely based on Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz's play, and Rio, mein Rio, a concerto for solo double bass and ensemble.

Rio, mein 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 project sits beside literature-based music theatre and paratheatrical stage work in the current shape of his practice.

Artistic profile

Music as situation

The artistic profile around Gabryś is not only a sequence of roles. It is a working field in which composition, interpretation, staged action and instrumental identity continually affect one another.

His music often treats sound as something carried by bodies, gestures, spaces and risk. Humour and absurdity can appear beside ritual seriousness; the double bass can become a dramatic presence, a body on stage, and at times the protagonist of the situation.

Artistic spine

Vertebrae of the artistic world

  1. Composition as situation

    Gabryś often treats composition not only as the writing of notes, but as the construction of musical, theatrical, physical and social situations.

  2. Double bass as protagonist

    His work with the double bass places the instrument in solo, dramatic, concertante and theatrical situations.

  3. Paratheatre and embodied sound

    Gesture, voice, stage presence and physical action appear as structural materials, not as decoration around the music.

  4. Live electronics and media

    Live electronics, tape, video, text and media forms recur across works from early tape pieces to later polymedial projects.

  5. Basel / Basilesia / Bas-el

    Basel and Silesia form a recurring field of place, language and identity in works such as Bas-el-Karneval, Bas-El and Basilesia.

  6. Premieres and dedications

    This station gathers dedicated works, premieres and new repertoire connected to his work as a double bassist.

  7. Ensembles and collaborations

    His activity passes through Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Contrechamps and other contemporary-music contexts.

  8. Discography and recordings

    Bassolo and ensemble recordings form a discographic trace of his solo and chamber-music work.
  9. forthcoming

    Press and reception

    Press excerpts and archival reviews will be added only when sources, scans or publication details are ready.

Selected works

A compact entry into the forthcoming catalogue.

Early works / tape / electronics / instrumental theatre

Tape, instrumental theatre, stage light and early electronic situations.

  • Miniatury na kontrabas i taśmę 1990
  • Voak gefeustich 1992
  • Święty Boże 1993
  • Quadrofonietta 1996
  • Man in Fish 1999

Double bass works

Solo, theatrical and concertante situations for double bass.

  • Patrix 2001
  • Aleksandrietta 2003
  • Jekyll-Hyde 2004
  • BASSBOXTRING

Basel / Silesia / place-related works

  • Bas-el-Karneval 2000
  • Bas-El 2006
  • Basilesia
  • 2-Pol-Run

Stage, film and polymedial works

Music theatre, film, media, creative mixing and embodied performance.

  • Donquixoterie 2008
  • elUle 2010
  • Bestiarium – Fortune Square trio tripSinfAct 2013
  • metAtem 2014
  • Walser Code
  • Prāṇāhtron
  • ILINX
  • MANIFESTO PLAYBOX

Recent large-scale projects

Large artistic structures currently functioning as major website towers.

  • Die Beelzebub Sonate
  • Rio, mein Rio
Works catalogue

Press / Reception

Reception will be added only with sources.

Press excerpts and archival reviews will be added here.

The Strad
Bassolo Sources forthcoming