SPARK: The Art of Adaptation


18 - 19h                                 CONCERT 

                                             SooJin Anjou, piano

                                             Julia Dawson, soprano

                                             Önay Köse, baritone

Dmitri Kourliandski (1976-)    Looming Lines for a singing pianist (2026)*
                                                       *World premiere; commissioned by SPARK

                                       Who’s Afraid of Hugo Wolf?

Concept: Julia Dawson

Text and Dramaturgy: Julia Dawson and SooJin Anjou

With excerpts from Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch

19.15 - 20h                            DISCUSSION

               "The Art of Adaptation: Change Is the Only Constant"

SPARK, a regular meeting of artists and scientists, encourages everyone to think outside their bubbles through questions, dialogue, and creation.

SPARK director and pianist SooJin Anjou presents composer Dmitri Kourliandski and singers Julia Dawson and Önay Köse, in a brand-new composition and humorous adaptations of 19th-century songs.
In the second part of the evening, Anjou and MDC/BIMSB director Nikolaus Rajewsky will host an open dialogue with the artists and top life-science researchers on 'The Art of Adaptation: Change Is the Only Constant.' Panelists will share their experiences of extreme adaptation, ranging from physical transformation to political exile. The audience is actively encouraged to join the conversation.

With Dmitri Kourliandski, Julia Dawson and Önay Köse.

Hosted by SooJin Anjou and Dr. Nikolaus Rajewsky 

Please Register 

Pianist SooJin Anjou enjoys an astonishingly varied international career as soloist, chamber musician and partner in diverse interdisciplinary projects. Born in South Korea, she was educated in the United States, Hungary and Germany. She graduated from the Juilliard School as the only person in its history to win both of Juilliard’s undergraduate commencement prizes, for achievement and leadership in music and the liberal arts. 

SooJin Anjou is an avid performer of contemporary music, and composers have been entrusting their work to her since she was 15. She has premiered works by, among others, Valentin Silvestrov, Elena Kats-Chernin and David Del Tredici.  Her world-premiere recording of the complete piano works of electronic music legend Morton Subotnick was released to great acclaim, eliciting such praise as “magical and beguiling” (Wire Magazine, London).

As soloist, she made her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at  age 16 with Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto. Her broad repertoire includes more than 40 concertos, ranging from Bach to Berio, as well as the complete works of Ravel. 

A passionate teacher, SooJin Anjou has served on the piano and chamber music faculties of the UdK Berlin and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Starting in 2027, she will hold a full professorship at the Bruckner University in Linz, Austria.

© Belen Ferrer Thuillier

Hailed as "radiant and riveting" (Opera News) and a "spitfire" (The New York Times), Canadian soprano Julia Dawson is a winner of the George London Award and the Anny-Schlemm-Preis. Following successful ensemble seasons at Oper Frankfurt, her recent operatic highlights include La Licenza in Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione with Palermo Classica, Servilia with Pacific Opera Victoria, and Donna Anna at the Banff Centre. On the concert stage, she has performed Stravinsky's Pulcinella with the Munich Philharmonic and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under the baton of Barbara Hannigan, as well as Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer. A deeply committed interpreter of contemporary works, she recently earned an Opus Klassik nomination for her performance in Scott Ordway's Girl in the Snow.

© Mete O╠êzeren

Turkish baritone Önay Köse has dynamically transitioned an acclaimed career as a bass into the major baritone repertoire. A graduate of The Juilliard School and a former ensemble member of the Komische Oper Berlin, he has graced major global stages, including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Canadian Opera Company, Oper Frankfurt, Oper Köln, Opéra National du Rhin Strasbourg, and Carnegie Hall, and has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Highly regarded for his velvety timbre, his busy 2026/27 season features an extensive international lineup of leading baritone roles, highlighted by major Verdi milestones including Renato in Un ballo in maschera and the coveted title role in Rigoletto.

© Nastya Rodionova

Born in Moscow, composer Dmitri Kourliandski studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Leonid Bobylev. He has been based in France since 2022, working internationally as a highly decorated artist. His honors include the Gaudeamus Prize, the Franco Abbiati Prize, the Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award, and the Johann Joseph Fux Opera Composition Prize. He was an artist-in-residence with the Berliner Künstlerprogramm in 2008 and a 2025/26 fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Kourliandski’s chamber, orchestral, and operatic works are performed worldwide by premier ensembles like the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Klangforum Wien, and featured at major festivals including the SWR Orchestra Festivals, the Ruhrtriennale, the Venice Biennale, and the Donaueschinger Musiktage. His compositions—often static and repetitive—pioneer the concept of "objective music," treating sound as a physical object, a visual phenomenon, or an interactive spatial installation.

Nikolaus Rajewsky is the scientific director of the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology at the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB) in Berlin Mitte, which he founded in 2008. The MDC-BIMSB now houses about 25 labs. His research investigates how and why genes are switched on or off in healthy and diseased cells, and he develops methods to interfere with disease trajectories. To this end, he combines computational approaches (computer science, statistics, theoretical physics) with methods from biochemistry and molecular biology.

Nikolaus studied theoretical physics at the University of Cologne, where he received his PhD, and went on to hold research and faculty positions in the United States at Rutgers University, Rockefeller University, and New York University before being appointed Professor for Systems Biology at the MDC and Charité in Berlin in 2006.

He is a member of numerous international advisory boards, an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He is among the most highly cited researchers in his field and has received numerous awards, including an honorary doctorate from La Sapienza University in Rome and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation (DFG).