Birke J. Bertelsmeier was born in Hilden, Germany in 1981. She received piano instruction from Barbara Szczepanska, composition classes from David Graham and studied piano under Pavel Gililov at Cologne’s University of Music and Dance (attaining her degree diploma in 2005). After this she went on to study under Wolfgang Rihm at Karlsruhe University of Music (degree diploma in 2008, concert examination in 2011). Furthermore, she gained a Masters in Musicology in 2009. She has received grants from the International Ensemble Modern Academy, Akademie Musiktheater heute, Herrenhaus Edenkoben, Villa Concordia in Bamberg and Villa Massimo in Rome.

Birke J. Bertelsmeier’s comprehensive catalog of works comprises musical theater and film scores as well as orchestral works, chamber music and solo pieces. She has received numerous prizes for her compositions – for instance the Karlsruhe Composition Prize, the award from the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music New York and, in 2012, the Schneider-Schott Music Prize. She has received composition commissions from such bodies as Festival Heidelberger Frühling, the Munich Biennale, the Beijing International Music Competition, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Darmstadt Summer School. Her works are performed at international festivals and by renowned performers, for instance the Arditti Quartet, Quatuor Diotima, the Ensemble Modern, Tabea Zimmermann, Christoph Eschenbach and by the Bamberger Symphoniker. In 2014 the Deutsche Oper Berlin was host to the performance of two musical theater works – Querelle after Jean Genet and Die Rose und die Nachtigall after Oscar Wilde.

She taught composition at the youth seminars of Beethovenhaus Bonn and of North Rhine-Westphalia’s music council Musikrat NRW. As a grant recipient of the Dorothea-Erxleben Program she also taught at Hannover University of Music and Theater.