Sidney Corbett was born in Chicago in 1960, the son of a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, though he grew up without a religious upbringing. At the end of 1968 the family moved to Los Angeles, California, and from 1974 he began to learn the electric guitar and play in various bands – first blues and rock, later jazz fusion. In 1977, Corbett began writing his first original compositions, short piano pieces in quartal harmony. “For me, the guitar fret-board was a very small universe,” he once said in a SWR feature about his work, “the world is a much larger place.” This realization led him to study music, philosophy and composition at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and then at Yale University, where he earned his doctorate in 1989 with a thesis on Edgar Varèse’s “Hyperprism.” His teachers included Pauline Oliveros, Bernard Rands, Frederic Rzewski, Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, and Morton Subotnick. Personal encounters with Toru Takemitsu and John Cage also made a lasting impression on the young composer. From 1985 to 1988, he was also a member of György Ligeti’s composition class in Hamburg, certainly his most formative influence. Exceedingly strict, Ligeti demanded not only impeccable craftsmanship but also individuality and the constant questioning of all aspects of art.

Work:
Although Corbett composes for all genres – orchestral music, chamber music, vocal music – a significant portion of his musical output is devoted to music theatre. Often based on literary sources, Corbett enjoys working with contemporary authors, such as Christoph Hein and Brazilian poet Simone Homem de Mello. In 2001, “Noach,” Corbett’s first major opera, based on an original libretto by Christoph Hein, premiered at the Bremen Theatre. This was followed by the chamber opera “Keine Stille (außer der Windes)”, on texts by Fernando Pessoa, arranged by Simone de Mello, which also premiered in Bremen, in 2006. This work will be presented at the National Theater Mannheim in a new production in 2022. In 2012, “UBU: A Grotesque” after Alfred Jarry, again based on a libretto by de Mello, was created for the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen, and in 2013 “Das große Heft” after the novel by Agota Kristof with a libretto by Ralf Waldschmidt was premiered in Osnabrück. “Das Große Heft” will receive a new production at the Opera House in Braunschweig in May 2022 under the direction of Isabel Ostermann. In 2016, Corbett’s opera “Die Andere” was premiered in Magdeburg, again to a libretto by the writer Christoph Hein. Based on the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, this opera explores the question at what point one’s own principles are abandoned in the face of increasing external pressure. In 2018, Corbett’s most recent opera, “San Paolo,” based on an unrealized film script by Pier Paolo Pasolini, was premiered, again in Osnabrück. “San Paolo” received the Palatinate Prize for Music in 2018. Among Corbett’s larger orchestral works are three symphonies, “Tympan,” “The Immaculate Sands,” and “Breathing the Water,” as well as the violin concerto, “Yael.” The latter two works testify to the composer’s literary inclinations, which can also be found in his instrumental music. In “Breathing the Water,” texts by the great American poet Denise Levertov, with whom Corbett maintained a correspondence, are juxtaposed with poetry by the Iraqi poet Amal Al-Jouburi, who lives in Germany. This work was commissioned by the Staatskapelle Berlin and premiered in 2006. Yaël, on the other hand, reflects Corbett’s intense, decades-long study of the work of Edmond Jabés, an Egyptian writer of Jewish heritage who lived in exile in Paris until his death in 1993. Vocal works on texts by Roland Barthes, Giordano Bruno, Mahmoud Darwish, Christine Lavant, and others are further examples of his literary proclivities. His major chamber music works include “Fractured Eden” for string quartet, “Rasch”, for soprano and chamber ensemble, his piano trio and piano quintet, and his autobiographically influenced electric guitar concerto, “Exits”, composed for Musikfabrik NRW and guitarist Seth Josel, commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Cologne, and heard on the solo CD “que hora es in paradiso?”. There are also many pieces in smaller instrumentations, as well as solo works, often the result of intensive collaboration with the performers of his music. In 2017, for example, Edition Kopernikus released the CD “Postscript” with his piano music, recorded by Florian Heinisch.