Oliver Peter Graber

With extensive international artistic or further professional experience in the fields of composition, concert piano, music theory (with a focus on "neuromusic theory" or "brain and music"), and (ballet) dramaturgy, Oliver Peter Graber, as director of the "Research Institute for Music Medicine with a focus on Arts for Health" (Department of Music), represents the concept of interdisciplinarity, which is of central importance and an essential guiding principle for the Research Institute for Music Medicine, in a special way.



For many years, his compositional activities have focused on stage works with a scientific background (e.g., in the form of sonification of scientific data that serve as the basis for electronic scores), including works such as "off ballet special" (ballet, Vienna State Opera, various versions), "Shiva's Chamber" (ballet, Landestheater Linz), "Re:volution 09" (ballet, Theater Dortmund), and "Alchemy" (opera with libretto by Roald Hoffmann, University of Basel). For the realization of such projects, cooperations with scientific research centers or universities, research groups or individual research personalities are also repeatedly at the center of his artistic activities.



The areas of "functional imaging of the brain in the context of basic research in music theory (fMRI, PET, fNIRS)", "basic harmonic research" and "interdisciplinary structural research based on computational methods of chemistry and bioinformatics" are the focal points of his research interests at the sector Arts for Health as Artistic Research. At the Research Institute for Music Medicine, he therefore represents the central research areas of "Piano & Brain Health" (i.e., the question of how keyboard instruments can be used to trigger neuronal plasticity, for example) and "Functional Composition in Clinical Use" (i.e., the question of how compositions must be functionally designed in order to be optimally used in different clinical or non-clinical settings). Software developments (e.g. in the sector of algorithmic composition using artificial intelligence, AI) are also in the foreground.



Oliver Peter Graber's previous professional positions include, in addition to freelance artistic work, several years of scientific-artistic coordination and university assistance at the Interdisciplinary Platform for Chronobiological Research (IPCF) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, as well as several years as dramaturg of the Vienna State Ballet. Since 2008, he has also enjoyed a particularly intensive collaboration with Klaus-Felix Laczika, the current co-director of the Research Institute for Music Medicine (Department of Medicine) at JAM MUSIC LAB Private University. In this context, Oliver Peter Graber and Klaus-Felix Laczika worked together both in the framework of IPCF, special artistic-scientific projects (e.g. Laczika K, Graber OP, Tucek G, Lohninger A, Fliri N, Berka-Schmid G, Masel EK, Zielinski CC. "Il flauto magico" still works: Mozart's secret of ventilation. Multidiscip Respir Med. 2013 Mar 19;8(1):23. doi: 10.1186/2049-6958-8-23. PMID: 23509946; PMCID: PMC3608996.) or in the context of world premieres for the St. Florian Bruckner Days or the ensemble "PhiliTango," consisting of members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, together.