Biography
Elena Postumi is an Italian composer, conductor, and pianist. Hailed as “a composer whose contemporary tonal language oscillates between the popular and the avant-garde” (FAZ), she brings together her background in literature, architecture, philosophy, and the phenomenology of music to forge a compositional language that is both conceptually rigorous and sensually immediate. Her work as conductor, coach, and pianist forms an ongoing dialogue with her compositional practice, resulting in a rich and integrated artistic identity.
Her upcoming projects include a new orchestral piece for the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt (Oder), to be premiered in February 2026; conducting Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor at the Mývatssveit Festival in Iceland in April 2026; and a 2026 CD release titled Icelandic Contemporary Songs, featuring Postumi both as pianist and composer. She holds current positions as lecturer in orchestration, chamber music and conductor at the Akademie für Tonkunst Darmstadt and, beginning in Fall 2025, as coach and lecturer in Italian diction at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, reflecting her growing international reputation for vocal interpretation and stylistic expertise.
A passionate connoisseur of the human voice, Postumi’s artistic thinking is informed by the phenomenology of music, which she has explored since 2014 under Elizabeth Sombart. This philosophical foundation shapes her approach to composition, performance, and pedagogy.
She has written and premiered numerous vocal, chamber and orchestral works; her Konzert für Violine und Orchester (2019) and Konzert für Flöte und Kammerorchester, Corifeo delle correnti(2021) were both premiered in Iceland to enthusiastic acclaim, and her own music-theatre work Becoming Luise Büchner (directed by Lara Yilmaz) was premiered at the Staatstheater Darmstadt in November 2022.
She is an enthusiastic soloist, chamber musician, and song partner, performing internationally with renown. Her dedication to vocal collaboration led her to opera houses in Europa and South America (the Norwegian National Opera in Bergen (Den Nasjonale Operaen i Bergen), National Opera of Iceland(Íslenska óperan), the Teatro Solís in Montevideo, etc.), where she worked as répétiteur, pianist, and musical assistant, while holding the same position at the Staatstheater Darmstadt from 2020 to 2023.
Educated in Rome, Berlin and Leipzig, Postumi received an interdisciplinary training encompassing composition, song interpretation, conducting, European literature, and architecture. She is a STIBET scholarship alumna and a fellow of Live Music Now, the foundation established by Yehudi Menuhin.
