As both composer and musician, Simon Zöchbauer is an enquiring spirit. Freethinking and playful, with the meticulousness of a scholar and the profundity of a philosopher he charts musical landscapes, burrows for roots and looks behind the facades which make up his everyday reality. He pursued a career as a professional musician after being awarded first prize with distinction in the nationwide Prima La Musica competition in 2003, which convinced him he had found an artistic form of expression. His trumpet studies eventually led him to Vienna, Linz, Karlsruhe and New York City. With his now internationally celebrated ensemble Federspiel, which has already played on the best-known concert stages throughout the world (Goldener Saal of the Musikverein Wien, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and many more), he digs down for roots and underlying soil. In his first solo project, with which Zöchbauer now celebrates his debut in 2019, his compositions open up to contemporary and electronic impulses as well the influences of sacred music. With the release of the album “Achad” and, no less importantly, his role as of 2018 as artistic director of the wellenklænge festival Lunz am See, the present is emerging ever more clearly as the focus of his creative activity. Zöchbauer’s searching preoccupation with the music and its creative conditions unlocks spaces which project out from the moment into the temporal past and future in equal measure. www.simonzoechbauer.at