City of Basel honors Niki Reiser
The composer Niki Reiser receives the City of Basel Culture Prize, endowed with 20,000 francs, and the illustrator Ziska Bachwas is awarded the Culture Promotion Prize.
The 62-year-old Basel native, who has won numerous prestigious film and TV awards, achieved his international breakthrough in 1996 with the film "Jenseits der Stille" by Caroline Link, which received both the German Film Award and an Oscar nomination. Since then, he has composed the music for numerous audience favorites from the German film industry in his sound studio in Gundeldingerfeld, including the 2002 Oscar-winning "Nowhere in Africa" and "The White Maasai".
Niki Reiser studied classical music in Basel, specializing in flute, before studying jazz and film music at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. He usually records his film music with the participation of musicians from Basel and with his sound engineer Daniel Dettwiler at Idee und Klang Studio Basel. At the Zurich University of the Arts, he teaches on the master's course for film and theater music. As a jazz flutist, he was a member of the Basel klezmer jazz band Kol Simcha for many years.
