Berthold Cvach & Max Brand Ensemble
Biography Berthold Cvach & Max Brand Ensemble
Berthold Cvach
After concluding his successful career as a pharmacist and manager, he began studying composition, arrangement, and music theory at the Music Jam Lab Private University in Vienna with Christian Mühlbacher. He graduated in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music. His subsequent master's degree was completed with distinction with a concert at the Viennese Jazz & Music Club Porgy & Bess on June 27, 2021. It was already evident that his genres cannot be limited. Chansons, jazz, and new music were presented. Since 2013, he has been studying composition and orchestration privately with Jaime Wolfson (mdw), with a focus on new music. His compositional work ranges from pure jazz to contemporary classical music. Jazz-inspired compositions in contemporary music lead to hybrid results that are intended to demonstrate the attempt of a new path. His works include instrumental and vocal music.
He has been selected as a prizewinner in anonymous competitions with several of his compositions:
His septet "Unheile Welt" was selected, among other things, as one of the winning works in a composition competition organized by the INÖK (INÖK – Interest Group of Lower Austrian Composers) in cooperation with the Upper Austrian Composers' Association, the Cultural Department of the State of Lower Austria, and "Kultur Oberösterreich" in 2022, and premiered by the Max Brand Ensemble and Prof. Richard Graf in early 2023.
As part of the composition competition organized by Allegro Vivo, the INÖK, the Musikfabrik NÖ, the Doblinger Music Publishers, and the Cultural Department of the State of Lower Austria, his piano trio "Da Drunt" was awarded the Musikfabrik NÖ Special Prize in 2023. The premiere of all prizewinners took place on March 20, 2024, in the Ehrbarsäle in Vienna.
In February 2023, he presented his first jazz album, "In The Beginnin'," recorded with the Vienna JazzTett, where he plays keyboards.
The MAX BRAND Ensemble
sees itself as a source of inspiration for new forms of contemporary music. Inspired by the visionary attitude of the Austrian composer Max Brand (1896-1980) – who dedicated his life to expanding musical expression through new technologies – the ensemble is dedicated to the interface between acoustic and electronic music, between improvisational and compositional strategies. Musicians and composers from different fields and genres enter into dialogue with one another and create a field of tension in which new sound spaces emerge.
The MAX BRAND Ensemble was founded in 2012 on the initiative of Richard Graf, with the support of INÖK (Lower Austrian Composers' Interest Group) under the inspiring aegis of Friedrich Cerha, who once championed the performance of Max Brand's works.
The ensemble thus consciously builds on a tradition characterized equally by artistic curiosity and a deep awareness of the history of the Austrian avant-garde. Since its founding, it has established itself as a "laboratory" for innovative concert formats where composition, improvisation, and new technologies converge. The aim is clear: music should be experienced as a living, contemporary art form – approachable, experimental, and open.
