Gordon Kampe was born in Herne in 1976, where he completed an apprenticeship as an electrician (1993-1995). After graduating from high school and completing his civil service, he studied composition at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre under Hans-Joachim Hespos and Prof. Adriana Hölszky (1998-2000). From 2000-2003, he continued his studies with Prof. Nicolaus A. Huber at the Folkwang University in Essen. He also studied musicology and history at the Ruhr University in Bochum. From 2004-2006, he was a research assistant on the DFG research project “Music Theory of Viennese Modernism”. Doctoral thesis in musicology on fairy tale operas in the 20th century. From 2009-2017 he was a research associate at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. His research interests include opera and music theater, 21st-century music, and popular music theory.

Kampe was co-editor of the journal Seiltanz – Beiträge zur Musik der Gegenwart and was a member of the Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften/Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina from 2012-2017, of which he was spokesperson in 2015/16. In the academic year 2014/15, Gordon Kampe was a substitute professor of historical musicology at the Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen. From 2017-2020 he was professor of composition/music theory at the HfMT Hamburg, and from October 2020 he will be professor of composition at the HfMT Hamburg. Since 2019, member of the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg; since 2021, president of the Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (GNM). Kampe has been artistic director of the national competition Jugend komponiert since 2024.
http://www.gordonkampe.de/