About Me
SAXOPHONIST
COMPOSER
MEDIA ARTIST
CURATOR
CULTURAL MANAGER
Nikola Lutz is a saxophonist, composer, media artist and curator. Having studied the saxophone in Bordeaux and Stuttgart, she is now a renowned performer of contemporary and experimental music. In 2010, she was awarded first prize and the audience prize at the International Saxophone Competition in Paris. Numerous world premieres of works by composers such as Ying Wang, Andrés Gonzáles, Huihui Cheng, Alan Hilario, Makiko Niskikaze, and Christophe Havel highlight her ongoing interest in the creative development of saxophone music. Since 2013, she has also played the Eastern European instrument tárogató, for which she has commissioned numerous works. She has toured North and South America, Korea, China, Russia, India and various European countries.
As a composer, she is interested in electronic music and conceptual improvisation, as demonstrated by the full-length multimedia performance foco_2018, which she created for Deutschlandfunk. In 2018, she also met the Chilean double bassist César Bernal and founded the duo YonX with him. Since then, they have been exploring the space between improvisation and composition. As an improviser, Nikola Lutz cultivates a radical focus on the lived moment. She is interested in the body as a complex aesthetic filter and source of embodied information. In the MadMap project series, the duo explores traces of different eras and events that are visibly or subliminally etched into places through multimedia improvisational concepts. In 2025, YonX released the CD zek.
For Nikola Lutz, art is closely linked to social development. Consequently, she prefers to address politics and current issues in her work. Through the projects freemascha.org (2022) and mem.cont.act (2023), she protested the arrest of Maria Kalesnikava using artistic methods and created spaces for oppressed groups to exercise their freedom of speech. She adapts her artistic language flexibly to meet the demands of each project.
Since 2020, she has worked increasingly in multimedia and as a video and net artist. Driven by a joy of experimentation with new technologies, she dedicates herself to critiquing and reflecting on digitalization. In 2021, she curated the My Behavioral Surplus festival, which examined the social consequences of data capitalism. In 2022, she joined the nota community, which artistically explores and further develops the online platform nota. The software provides an opportunity to question the structural normativity and binary nature of digital culture. In the 2026 project sonic resistance, she continues her critique and, in her composition Algophobia, reflects on digital numbing strategies and the loss of social discourse within the filter bubble.
Since founding the Stuttgarter Kollektiv für aktuelle Musik e.V. in 2015, she has led the organization's efforts to promote contemporary music in the Stuttgart area.
CV (PDF download, German)
© Frank Post
Education
2025-2026
Rhetoric Certificate Program at HMDK Stuttgart
2017–2019
Training to become a certified dispokinetician
1992–1996
Studied classical saxophone with Prof. B. Konrad Stuttgart, graduating with a diploma
1989–1990
Studied classical saxophone with Prof. J.-M. Londeix Bordeaux (F)
Current projects
2026
Sonic Resistance - A Concert that Reinvents the Digital Discourse
2025
Brandspuren - Visual Poetry Meets Live Electronics, Dance, and Improvisation
2024-2026
zek - A series of works featuring musical settings of texts by Maxim Znak
2023
mem.cont.act – participatory installation in public space and series of events
2022–now
freemascha – Internet platform and videos for Mascha Kalesnikava
2021
Xibipíío II – media installation
extinct.algorithm – website and installation
2019–now
Duo YonX – concept improvisation and multimedia performance with César Bernal – double bass
Artworks
2022–now
MadMap – multimedia performance series with the duo YonX
2020
weiss/rot/weiss – Music performance for Masha Kalesnikava
The Creature In My Mirror – Film, performance and installation
2019
the darkroom of the map – for soprano, piano, viola and tape
2018
foco_2018 – multimedia music performance
El perro amarillo / Der gelbe Hund – for improvisation ensemble and 4-channel tape
2011-now
Series of works GraphicSounds - graphic scores for variable ensembles
Prizes, Awards
2023
Artist in Residence at Villa Waldberta Feldafing
2022
Research grant from the Music Fund for the MadMap concept by the duo YonX
2017
Awarded an honorary professorship by the HDMK Stuttgart
2010
Prix du Conseil Général des Hauts de Seine at Ville d’Avray (1. Preis sowie Publikumspreis)
1998
Scholarship from the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation
Publications
2025
Virtual CD zek with Duo YonX and Lukax Santana - viajero inmovil (Chile)
Essay Von ästhetischen Zufällen und unerwarteten Klangereignissen in: Veröffentlichungen des INMM Band 64, Schott Verlag
2022
CD YonX – sellomodular (Chile)
2021
Soloist on Annesley Black – things that didn’t work the first time (Kairos)
Reader Festival My Behavioral Surplus
2020
CD Freund Stein / El amigo piedra sellomodular (Chile)
2016
CD Infinite Jest – Gruenrecorder / DLF
2015
If music von Maximilian Marcoll – Self published on USB-Stick
Internet
2023
MadMap # 10 / Artefacto 01
2022
The Creature In My Mirror – MadMap nota space, Online artwork for YonX MadMap
2021
SpamScore played by YonX
2020
El perro amarillo / Der gelbe Hund
2016
Study for Tárogató and Wire
Cultural management
since 2025
Juror for Live Music Now!
2024
Concept development and direction of the black box_blank page event series for SKAM e.V.
2021/2022
Juror at festivals and awards for web-based music (notanear, BROWSERSOUND 2021)
2021
Artistic direction My Behavioral Surplus: The Freedom of Speech in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Festival on the social impact of digitalization and data capitalism
since 2019
Development of the concert series out of the box for the city of Leonberg
since 2015
Co-founder and first chairwoman of S-K-A-M Stuttgarter Collective for Current Music e.V.
since 2001
Founding of the Stuttgart Saxophone Festival, holding seven festivals to date
Teaching
2026
Workshop The saxopohone - a creative voice in contemporary aesthetics Kyunghee University (KOREA)
2019–now
Freelance Dispokinesis Instruction: Competition Preparation, Performance Training, and Intervention for Performance Issues
Teaching languages: German, English, Spanish, French
If you'd like to work wich me please feel free to send me an email HERE.
2023
Workshops Software nota UNNE (AR), UNTREF (AR), UNIRIO (BR)
2002–now
Saxophone master classes at universities in Brazil, Peru, Chile, USA, China, Europe
2019
Maserclasses improvisation Universidad San Marco (Peru), HMDK Stuttgart, University of New Mexico (USA)
2015
Masterclass composition for saxophone Shanghai Conservatory of Music