Elke Moltrecht is a graduate musicologist (Humboldt University of Berlin) with a focus on curation, mediation and event development in the field of contemporary music. She has been working as an artist manager at karsten witt musik management and as a lecturer at the kwmm Academy since 2022.
Her work in newly initiated institutions, projects, initiatives and networks is a recurring theme in her biography. Immediately after secondary school, she worked for a year at the publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel/Hofmeister/Verlag für Neue Musik and became a member of the founding phase of the Bosehaus/Bachmuseum Leipzig and subsequently a research assistant and co-founder of the Heinrich-Schütz-Hauses/Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätte Bad Köstritz.
From 1992, Elke Moltrecht worked for the newly established Podewil – Zentrum für aktuelle Künste. From 1995 to 2005, she was the main director of its music department and developed Podewil into a centre for contemporary, experimental music in Berlin. In 2001 she founded the in-house CD label x-tract for experimental and electronic music as part of her curatorial practice for Podewil.
In 2006 and 2007, she took over the management of Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Berlin Kreuzberg, which she accentuated internationally. Subsequently, from 2008 to 2011, she was Executive Director of the newly founded and state-wide New Music Network Musik 21 Niedersachsen and was active in both urban and rural areas of Lower Saxony in order to develop new concert and performance formats.
In 2013, she founded the Ensemble Extrakte for trans-traditional musical practice and research. Since 2025, the ensemble has been performing as Ensemble Extrakte Kollektiv with various guest musicians.
In the same year, she led the first project of the Humboldt Lab Dahlem and curated the musical exhibition “Musik sehen”.
From 2014 to 2019, Elke Moltrecht was Executive Director of the newly initiated Akademie der Künste der Welt Köln, which established itself internationally as a globally oriented institution with a model character during her time in office.
As a curator with a cross-genre interest and transnational vision, Elke Moltrecht has been designing interdisciplinary projects, festivals and annual programmes with contemporary European and non-European music since the 1990s. In doing so, she has always brought popular and experimental-electronic varieties, as well as the border areas of jazz, improvisation, sound art and art in public and non-art spaces, into unusual thematic contexts.
In addition to her curatorial work, she publishes on experimental and new music in specialised publications and teaches and lectures on cosmopolitan curating.
She has been a regular member of national and international juries and boards since 1995 – and advises cultural policy and administration with her experienced perspective from artistic practice.
An overview of all productions and institutional production partners can be found here:
Contact: info@elkemoltrecht.de
Facebook: elke.moltrecht