ABOUT
Picture by Oliver Röckle
Magdalena Cerezo is a pianist and performer specialised in contemporary music. A central component of her practice as an artist is the research and exploration of the piano's implementation in the 21st Century, with the aim of creating new ways of integrating the instrument with both performance and multimedia art. Within this framework, she commissions new compositions and curates diverse projects, which call into question the inherent eurocentristic vision of piano culture.
During her career, Magdalena has collaborated with composers such as Bernhard Lang, Wolfgang Rihm, Beat Furrer, Heinz Holliger, Helmut Lachenmann, Rebecca Saunders, Mark Andre, Rolf Riehm, Johannes Kreidler, Adriana Hölszky, and Brian Ferneyhough, and has premiered works by Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Sotelo, Fabián Panisello, Benjamin Scheuer, Eliav Kohl, and Sara Glojnarić, among others.
Furthermore, she is a founding member of duo LAB51 and trio f:t, as well as the pianist of ARXIS Ensemble. She has performed with Ulysses Ensemble, Karlsruhe Opera Theater's Orchestra, Plural Ensemble (Madrid), Ensemble Courage Dresden, Marc Sinan Company and New Music Forum Ensemble Ljubljana, and is an honorific alumni member of Junge Deutsche Philharmonie.
Magdalena has collaborated closely with the late composer Rolf Riehm over many years, performing his piano works in Frankfurt, München, Darmstadt, Stuttgart, Dresden, and Ljubljana, among other engagements. Highlights include the Spanish premiere of Hawking with her ensemble ARXIS, as well as the premiere of the last piano work he completed during his lifetime, written specifically for her. Her engagement with his music continues to inform her repertoire and artistic practice.
In 2025, Magdalena’s projects included a solo recital at the Inselfestival Hombroich, as well as a solo recital in the “Boundless Piano” series at Atelier K283 in Bremen. She led a workshop on extended piano techniques in Madrid and performed with Duo LAB51 at the SUENA Festival in Vienna, the Anton Bruckner Private University – Sonic Lab in Linz, and the ENSEMS Festival (Valencia, Palau de les Arts), the ZeitGenuss Festival, and VOCATIONS in Berlin (silent green Kulturquartier). With Trio f:t, she premiered a new work for three pianos by Nicolas Kuhn, alongside Peter Ablinger’s monumental Grisailles, at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Köln. She also appeared with ARXIS Ensemble at the RESIS Festival under the direction of Daniel Huertas and at the Rathenower Tage für Neue Musik, and served as rehearsal pianist for Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia with the SWR Vokalensemble, among other engagements.
In 2024, she premiered works by Sara Glojnarić (Holitopia Festival Berlin), Manuel Hidalgo Navas (Festival de Royaumont), Sophie Youjung-Lee (Chamber opera Antigone von Sophokles), and Marc Sinan (AIODE–Paradise). She toured with ARXIS Ensemble in A Coruña, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria (Festival Internacional de Música de Canarias), closed the Musica Nova Reutlingen series with a solo recital featuring a premiere by Benjamin Scheuer alongside works by Poppe, Walshe, Glojnarić, and Kreidler, and gave her first public performance of Luigi Nono's …sofferte onde serene… at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (RESIS Festival).
Further highlights of the 2023–2024 season included the piano duo program El minimalismo a dos pianos with Alberto Rosado at the BBVA Foundation in Madrid, the world premiere of The Day Fanny Mendelssohn Died at ECLAT (LAB51/Óscar Escudero & Belenish Moreno-Gil), and nearly the entirety of Rolf Riehm's solo piano works at festival w e i t ! neue musik weingarten. She also performed extensively at ENSEMS, Kunstfest Weimar, ZeitGenuss, Musica in Prossimità, MetaWorld Contemporary Art Festival, and Musik21Niedersachsen (NDR Kleiner Sendesaal).
Notable 2022 projects included a lecture-concert on Xenakis' piano music with Marina Hervás and Marta Verde at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), a performance of Mantra by Karlheinz Stockhausen with Markus Stange at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, and concerts at RESIS Festival (LAB51 and ARXIS Ensemble under Beat Furrer), Auditorio Sony (Madrid, world premieres by Fabián Panisello’s studio with Donatienne Michel-Dansac), Royaumont Foundation, and Théâtre de l'Alliance Française (Paris) as part of Radio France's Générations France Musique.
Furthermore, Magdalena was an artist-in-residence at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (together with Johanna Vargas), and was awarded a stipend from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.
During the season 2019-20, she received a support grant from Landeshaupstadt Stuttgart and Musik der Jahrhunderte for the first part of her long term project [Ex_Piano_Revisited_Library], including two video productions and a concert at Theaterhaus Stuttgart, within the series Südseite Nachts.
In recent years, she has earned accolades such as the first prize of the John Cage Interpretation Award as a pianist of duo LAB51, the first prize of the Kulturfonds Baden Competition for the interpretation of Wolfgang Rihm's music, and a full scholarship from Ulysses Network to participate at the Call for Young Performers curated by Divertimento Ensemble Milano. In 2015, she was personally selected by Helmut Lachenmann to interpret his piano work Serynade at ZeitGenuss Festival in Karlsruhe.
Magdalena has performed in venues such as Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, Kölner Philharmonie, Berliner Philharmonie, Radialsystem V, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Galvin Hall, Theaterhaus Stuttgart, Slovenian Philharmonic Hall or Centre Pompidou Paris, and has taken part at festivals such as Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Time of Music, Impuls, ManiFeste, Donaueschinger Musiktage, NUNC!3 (Northwestern University Chicago), Der Sommer in Stuttgart, RESIS, ENSEMS, SUENA, Südseite Nachts, and Mixtur Barcelona, among others.
Her performances have been broadcasted by RTVE, Deutschlandfunk, Radio Bremen, HR, SWR, Radio France, and Digital Concert Hall.
During the 2018-19 season, she was correspondant in Germany for the contemporary music radio broadcast Música viva (Spanish National Radio).
Recent CD recordings featuring works by Sara Glojnarić, Rebecca Saunders and Wolfgang Rihm have been released by KAIROS (Pure Bliss/2023) and Naxos-Capriccio (Karlsruher Schule/2021). In 2024, her album Szenarium was released by the Pantopia Music platform, featuring piano works by composers Sergei Zagny and Maria de Alvear.
Magdalena believes in the piano as one of the greatest representatives of musical avant-garde since its inception. Coming from a family of great music lovers, she grew up surrounded by the repertoire of the great masters of classicism and romanticism, which served as the soundtrack of her daily life. She decided to dedicate herself professionally to music, motivated by her early chamber music experiences with works by Brahms and Fauré, among others. At the same time, from a very young age, she felt the need to explore new languages and engage in dialogue with the creators of her time, showing a vocational and immediate interest in contemporary music.
After graduating with honors from the University of Music Salamanca, under the guidance of professors such as Sophia Hase, Eduardo Ponce and Alberto Rosado, Magdalena moved to Germany, where she is currently based. Between 2011-2015, she obtained two masters degrees in classical piano and chamber music at the University of Music Karlsruhe. From 2016 onwards, she continued her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart under Prof. Nicolas Hodges, where she finished a third master's degree in contemporary music in 2018, and a Concert Soloist Degree in 2021.
Since 2018, she works as an adjunct instructor for Contemporary Voice Training/Contemporary Lied and Performance at the University of Music in Karlsruhe.
Upcoming projects include Les Rois Mages by Fabián Panisello with Plural Ensemble at Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo, two concerts with LAB51 at Festival Musique Démesurées in Clermont-Ferrand, two performances with ARXIS Ensemble under Armando Merino at RESIS Festival and Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, a performance of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel at Festival Manifeste (IRCAM, Paris) with the SWR Vokalensemble under Yuval Weinberg, and a concert within the series BETRIEBS I WERK I SCHAU of Klangforum Heidelberg at Betriebswerk Heidelberg, alongside soprano Sarah Kuppinger and composer Haosi Howard Chen.