"Laura Totenhagen takes the sharpest scalpel of vocal technique and slices her voice into its finest threads, laying each fragment bare."
Konrad Bott, SWR, the German public broadcaster

"Laura Totenhagen expands vocals into the realm of sound design. Layering effects with breaths, screams, and half-sung, half-chanted delivery, she uses her raw voice to craft a kaleidoscope of sonic transformations."
Edging, China, independent reviewer

The German vocalist, boundary-pushing improviser, and performer Laura Totenhagen (*1992) approaches her work with a questioning, playful, and subtly confrontational attitude. Emerging from the rigor of an academic background in oboe, piano, and eventually a Master of Music in voice at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, the artist thrives in technical maximalism, playfulness as research, and holistic performance.

Totenhagen developed her very own way of using her voice in the realms of free improvisation, a capella pieces or conceptual works to channel feminist ideas and personal experience – and the places where the two meet. She draws influence from noises, human interactions, feminist texts and theory and uses movement and visual storytelling alongside technical complexity and humor. 

Rather than narrowing her work into one specific area, Laura Totenhagen allows her practice to spread across three distinct streams: solo a capella performance, vocal effects work or her most recent production RAW, which features 5 duo-collaborators from the US and Germany.
She sees this as a vital breaking-down of musical elements that, in more rigid musical worlds, are pushed together for the sake of it, claustrophobic in their proximity. Through this separation, she gives care, thought and context to each element of her practice, and allows the space to fully explore their potential: rejecting bluster for creative liberation. 

Laura is an alumnus of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and NICA artist development. A masters graduate of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, she has worked collaboratively with a host of musicians and improvisers from Germany and beyond, and maintains close, ongoing working relationships with Australian poet and lyricist Ursula Martyn-Ellis. Through these connections and her personal artistic process, Laura’s work is an expression of her experience that seeks to evolve, expand, and question. 

Selection of previous venues, festivals, or series:

Bandai Namco Shanghai Base, China
Tampere Hall, Tampere, Finland
Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt Berlin, Germany
Berlin Philharmonie, Germany
Cologne Philharmonie, Germany
Musikverein Vienna, Austria
Telekom Forum Bonn, Germany
LVR Landesmuseum Bonn, Germany
Radialsystem Berlin, Germany
Villa Waldberta Feldafing, Germany
Zoglau 3, Austria
Stadtgarten Cologne, Germany
Altes Pfandhaus Cologne, Germany
Loft Cologne, Germany
Ehemaliges Stummfilmkino Delphi Berlin, Germany


A L'ARME! FESTIVAL Berlin, Germany
A Bunch Of Noise, Shanghai, China
London Jazz Festival, Germany
Voc Cologne at Philharmonie Cologne, Germany 
London Fashion Week (Paula Knorr show), United Kingdom
Deutsches Jazzfestival Frankfurt, Germany
Winterjazz Cologne, Germany
KLAENG Festival Cologne, Germany
Night of Surprise Cologne , Germany
Jazzfest Bonn, Germany
Leipziger Jazztage, Germany