is an internationally acclaimed violinist, composer, and sound artist. In her electroacoustic works, Zabelka combines improvised physicality with composed sonic architectures. Computer-generated sounds create structural fields into which “automatic playing” is embedded. Process and form, immediacy and conscious shaping, overlap and interact.
The concept of “automatic playing” developed by Mia Zabelka describes a physically driven form of improvisation in which sound emerges directly from gesture and performative presence. Music is not shaped by stylistic rules or predetermined structures, but grows out of movement, energy, and inner impulses. The violin functions as an expanded sonic interface; through spatial interaction and live electronics, its sound is transformed and modulated in real time. Electronics are not merely an addition, but a resonant space and an extension of the gesture.
Her concept of “multiversal music” extends this approach in a posthuman sense: music emerges as a networked constellation of physicality, technology, space, and environment. The human is no longer at the centre, but part of a dynamic system of acoustic, electronic, and material actors. Sound becomes a multidimensional event that dissolves identities, genres, and hierarchies—an expression of radical presence and open, transhuman sonic existence.
Mia Zabelka has cooperated with a wide range of internationally renowned artists across diverse musical disciplines, including Ensemble Zeitkratzer, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, Zahra Mani, and Wolfgang Mitterer. She performs extensively across Europe, USA, and Asia, and has appeared at prestigious festivals such as Wien Modern, Ars Electronica Linz, Steirischer Herbst Graz, Wiener Festwochen, Salzburger Festspiele, Elevate Festival Graz, Donaufestival Krems, Incubate Festival Tilburg, FLUSSI Festival Rome, CTM Festival Berlin, Blow Out Festival Oslo, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Rewire Festival The Hague, New Music America Festival, FIMAV Victoriaville, and Meakusma Festival Eupen.
Her extensive discography has been widely recognised by the international press. Three-time winner of the Prix Ars Electronica as well as the WDR Composition Prize, Luigi Russolo Prize, and other awards, she was also guest of the DAAD’s international artists’ programme in Berlin and the Fulbright Commission in New York. Her composition For Pauline Oliveros commissioned by musikprotokoll / Steirischer Herbst and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York as part of the Homages project, was honoured with the Akademia Music Award in 2018. In 2021, Zabelka was awarded the Austrian Art Prize in Music by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport. That same year, she was named an Honorary Alumni Member of the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK).
In addition to her performance and compositional work, Mia Zabelka is an active curator and cultural catalyst. In 2009, she founded Klanghaus Untergreith, a centre for sound art and interdisciplinary creativity in southern Styria, Austria. The centre organises the Klangzeit Festival three times annually. That same year, she became the artistic director of PhonoFemme Vienna, an international festival dedicated to experimental music and sound art by women.