Achim Christian Bornhoeft, born in 1966, won 1st prize at the Forum of Young German Composers while still at school. Further awards followed with 1st prize in the composition competition of the Cooperativa Neue Musik (CNM), the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize, 1st prize in the Federal University Competition for Composition and the Folkwang Prize for Composition in 1993. During his studies with Nicolaus A. Huber and Dirk Reith at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, he began working with the choreographers Olimpia Scardi, Stefan Hilterhaus and Wanda Golonka, with whom he developed several pieces. Guest performances took them to various theaters in Germany and other European countries. After graduating in composition, he went to the Computer Center for Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Standford University, USA, on a DAAD scholarship and subsequently worked as a freelance composer in various artistic contexts and collaborations.
Between 1996 and 1999 Achim Bornhöft was a lecturer at the University of Duisburg and at the Folkwang Hochschule. From 1998 to 2006 Achim Bornhöft also devoted himself to choreographic stage works and realized several full-length dance productions with different casts. In 1998 he was awarded a one-year composition scholarship by the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of Südwestfunk and in 2001, he was a guest artist at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. 2003 he received the Mummelsee art scholarship for his sculpture "Orplid: Spiegel und Schilf" (Orplid: Mirror and Reeds) and founded the music publishing company SUMTONE together with the composers Ludger Brümmer and Michael Edwards.
Achim Bornhöft's compositions are performed among others by the HR Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Radio Symphony Orchestra, by artists such as Irvine Arditti, Reinhold Friedrich, Robin Schulkowsky and ensembles such as Aventure, Mosaik, Phorminx, OENM, NAMES and Taller Sonoro at international festivals in Germany and abroad, including Donaueschinger Musiktage, ultraschall (Germany), Daegu International Musical Festival (South Korea), Dialoge Festival and Klangspuren Schwaz (Austria) and Warschauer Herbst (Poland). Lecture and concert tours have taken him to Mongolia (Roaring Hoofs Festival, Ulanbator), Kyrgyzstan (Silk Sound Road Festival, Bishkek), Vietnam and Indonesia (Cracking Bamboo, Hanoi / Bandung), the Ukraine (2 Days & 2 Nights, Odessa) and to Croatia for the Zagreb Music Biennale.
From 2005 to 2006 he worked at the Musicology Institute of the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and between 2007 and 2022 he directed the composition workshop "Jugend Komponiert" of the State Music Council of Baden-Württemberg.
Since 2006 Achim Bornhoeft is the director of the Studio for Electronic Music(SEM) at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, where he habilitated in composition in 2012. In 2015 he was appointed University Professor of Composition and took over as director of the Institute for New Music (INM) until 2023. Teaching residencies and master classes have taken him to several conservatories including Bari, Budapest, Castellón de la Plana, Cape Town, Lisbon, Milan, Mexico City, Parma, Riga, Riva del Garda, Salamanca, Seoul, Seville and Valencia.
