Barbara Maurer studied viola under Ulrich Koch in Freiburg and under David Takeno in London. She has been internationally active as a chamber player and soloist, focusing primarily on contemporary music. In 1986 she won the Kranichstainer Musikpreis and since 1989 has been a member or Ensemble Recherche. She has given around 30 premieres of solo pieces and has premiered around 500 chamber pieces, as well as making over 50 CD recordings. Since 1998, she has been a lecturer and juror at the Darmstadt summer courses and since 2007 has been involved in the annual “Hör Mal!” projects for school classes and children’s groups. She has made many translations from Italian, French and English in the fields of music and philosophy and has lectured and published works on the role of the performer. Since 2009, she has been a lecturer for new chamber music at the College for Music and Dance in Cologne. In 2014, her book on new sound phenomena on string instruments and the notation thereof was published by Breitkopf & Härtel.