Biography

Alexandre Babel is a swiss born and Berlin based drummer, percussionist and composer. Regarded as a reference both in the interpretation of the 20^th and 21^st century repertoire and in the experimental scene, he feels equally at home in free improvised music as in the most complicated contemporary notated pieces. Since 2013, he is the artistic director of the contemporary percussion collective Eklekto with whom he is constantly seeking to reinvent percussion music.

Babel performs as a solo artist and with groups through the five continents, in some of the leading venues and festivals of contemporary music. Principal percussionist of the contemporary chamber group KNM Berlin, Babel also collaborates with ensembles such as MusikFabrik, Schlagquartett Köln. As a drummer, he has worked with the noise-rock unit Sudden Infant, guitar legend Caspar Brötzmann as well as the duo White Zero Corp with french composer/bassist Pierre Jodlowski. He is a founding member of the performance collective Radial with the artist Mio Chareteau.

His compositions have been presented at the festival Archipel de Genève, the Oberlin University, the Mozarteum Salzburg.

Babel has been teaching and giving lectures at the University of the Arts in Berlin, the Geneva Conservatory of Music, the Western Australian Academy of performing Arts and the Melbourne University.