Georg Friedrich Haas (b. 1953 in Graz, Austria) has been associated with Ricordi Berlin since autumn 2016. He has taught at the University of the Arts in Graz (lastly as associate professor) and at the Music Academy in Basel. In 2013 he was appointed professor of music at Columbia University in New York and since then has taught composition there. Haas feels both rooted in the European tradition and strongly influenced by the aesthetic freedom of American composers like Charles Ives, Harry Partch, John Cage and James Tenney. He also has repeatedly made referece to the musical mysticism of the composers Giacinto Scelsi and Ivan Wyschnegradsky. In a survey published in the January 2017 issue of the Italian music periodical Classic Voice, 100 named experts were asked to choose “the most beautiful music composed since 2000”. By a wide margin, they awarded first place to Haas. His wide-ranging output, including numerous works for large orchestra, for chamber orchestra, instrumental concertos, eight operas, ten string quartets, a variety of other chamber music and vocal works etc., is constantly finding new audiences worldwide – and not only at special new music events; his compositions are also reaching a traditionally schooled public. Haas has devoted his work to the utopian ideal (not 100% attainable) of creating a new music that is both expressive and mellifluous – not despite but because of the fact that it is new.