The artistic director
Jörg-Hannes Hahn’s principal aims include achieving high artistic quality, making music with vibrant engagement, questioning outdated traditions and taking programming risks. As cantor and church music director, he has directed the concert series Musik am 13. (Music on the 13th) with the Bachchor Stuttgart and Cantus Stuttgart in the Stadtkirche and Lutherkirche Bad Cannstatt since 1996.
Jörg-Hannes Hahn studied church music, organ, piano and conducting with Werner Jacob, Ludger Lohmann and Marie-Claire Alain (Paris). In 1992 he won prizes at the Nuremberg Organ Week and elsewhere. He has taught artistic organ interpretation at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule since 1996. The following year he performed Max Reger’s complete organ works, followed by J. S. Bach’s organ works over 14 weeks at the end of the 2000 anniversary year. In May 2005, Jörg-Hannes Hahn was awarded the title “Kirchenmusikdirektor” (Church Music Director); then at the end of 2007 he was appointed Professor at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, and in 2008 was appointed Church District Cantor for the four Stuttgart deaneries.
He is cantor at the Stadt- und Lutherkirche Bad Cannstatt and has established the “Musik am 13.” series as the leading ecclesiastical platform for sacred music in southern Germany, with many premieres and first performances. At MUSIK AM 13. he initiated the series of composer portraits which has featured Krzysztof Penderecki, Klaus Huber, Helmut Lachenmann, Hans Zender, Marc Andre and many others. In 2005 he founded the international “Sommer! Organ” series with renowned guests from Germany and abroad. In 2020, Jörg-Hannes Hahn performed B. A. Zimmermann’s “Requiem for a Young Poet” for the first time in a church in a performance that attracted nationwide attention.
Engagements as a soloist, guest professor, competition juror and conductor have taken him to most European countries, Israel, North and South America and many times to Russia, Korea, Japan and China. Recordings for radio and CD capture his artistic personality, including the first recording of the complete organ works of C.P. E. Bach on the historic Marx-Migendt organ in Berlin-Karlshorst for CANTATE. Since 2018 he has been editor of “Musik und Kirche”, the leading periodical in German-speaking countries.
