Jana De Troyer

Composer, Performer and Sound Artist

Composer-Performer Jana De Troyer positions herself at the dynamic borders between styles and disciplines. She artfully switches between her roles of composer, free improviser, instrumentalist, human, sound artist, and bicycle player. Most recently this was seen in her production "Rückenwind" (2026): a chamber opera where she not only composed the music, but also was one of the performers on stage, playing saxophone, bass clarinet, bicycles, and electronics.

Coming from a background as a contemporary saxophonist, and also enjoying filmmaking, drawing, and writing, Jana has always been curious about further exploring and fusing various modes of expression. This “Experimentierfreude” has brought about a myriad of creative collaborations with composers, musicians and artists from other disciplines such as visual arts, dance and coding.

Jana's compositional output consists of both instrumental and electronic music, as well as interactive installations, web art, music theatre, and audiovisual works. She has developed works for a knitting guitar quartet (Fashionista’s), kissers (DU-O), a window cleaner (Putzzwang), a prepared bicycle choir (Noise Maps), and more. At the core of her work is a deep sonic exploration of non-musical concepts, which often leads to the integration of interdisciplinary means.
 

Jana De Troyer has been an artist-in-residence at CYCLE-UP (2024, Tartu), EMS (2023, Stockholm), Künstlerhaus Lauenburg (2022), subnetAIR (2022, Salzburg), and Künstlerstadt Kalbe (2017). She is a prizewinner of the Ad Libitum Composition Competition 2025 and the Lions Club Liubice Award 2019. In 2024-25 she was part of the renowned stART.up program of the Claussen-Simon Foundation in Hamburg. She was the musical director and composer of the music theater piece IT’S A MATCH by Kerstin Steeb, which premiered at Kampnagel in June 2025. In January 2024, a radio feature about her work was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk.

Jana De Troyer holds master's degrees in saxophone (MHL Lübeck, 2018) and in Contemporary Performance and Composition (HfMT Hamburg, 2020). She is a lecturer at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and at the SRH University – Classical and World Music Studies in Berlin. She is currently living in Hamburg, Germany.