Prof. Andrea Tober elected President
On 12 July 2023, the Extended Academic Senate of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin elected Professor and Prorector Andrea Tober as the new President of the School for a term of four years with an absolute majority in the first ballot. The term of office will begin in the winter semester 2023/24. Prof. Andrea Tober has already provisionally taken over the official duties of the previous rector Sarah Wedl-Wilson, who has led the school since October 2019 and was appointed State Secretary for Culture in the newly formed Berlin Senate in April this year.
With her presentation, Andrea Tober convinced the school community: "School should be a place of living and learning, where we enable and encourage students to find their way, to develop self-efficacy, to shape their future in a professional reality that none of us know." Strengthening cohesion and the sense of community at Eisler, sensitising students to social issues and new artistic spaces in the spirit of artistic citizenship, the further development of the postgraduate qualification phase in the field of artistic research and digitalisation are the priorities she places on the agenda of her term in office.
Musician, music educator and cultural manager Andrea Tober has been teaching at the Eisler as a professor of self-management and music education since 2012 and, in parallel, led the education programme of the Berliner Philharmoniker until 2020. In October 2019, she was elected Prorector and, as Commissioner for Digital Transformation - especially during the Corona pandemic - decisively advanced the digitalisation process within the university. In April, she also took on the role of deputy rector for the second time and thus assumed responsibility for the university in the university contract negotiations currently underway with the Berlin Senate.
For the university and the next generations of music creators, Andrea Tober has done an enormous amount of development work for the Department of Music Education and Interdisciplinary Professionalisation since 2012, preparing students for the changing professional life in today's and tomorrow's music world with great creativity and tenacious commitment. Numerous students enthusiastically participated in new music education formats and education projects.
Andrea Tober was born in 1972 in Herford. She studied music, majoring in flute, and German language and literature in Essen and Hanover, taught at schools, music schools and music academies, performed in various chamber music formations and was manager of various festivals and ensembles.
Before moving to Berlin, she was responsible for music education for children, young people and adults at the Kölner Philharmonie and initiated various artistic projects with choirs, orchestras and chamber music ensembles. In 2012 she took over the direction of the education programme "Zukunft@BPhil" of the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. Since 2013 she has been a member of the jury of the funding programme for cultural education "Kultur macht stark" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and since 2022 she has been the jury chairperson.