Bill Dietz (2023-2027) Incoming Artistic Director

The board of Overtoon is honored to announce that Bill Dietz will take on the position of artistic director, transitioning into the role in 2023. Dietz has worked as a curator, composer, artist, writer, and educator for over 15 years. He has an outspoken inclusive and discursive approach to sound art, with emphasis on its social and political implications, while also being tuned into the needs of artists and practitioners.

Dietz has previously held positions as co-chair of Music/Sound in Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, as founding editor of Ear | Wave | Event, as artistic director for Ensemble Zwischentöne, and on the board of the Maryanne Amacher Foundation. His work on genealogies of reception and the "political aesthetics of listening" is often presented in festivals, museums, and journals, but also in apartment buildings and on public streets.

Bill Dietz: "As an American based in Europe for the past 20 years anchored in the small world of sound, I have a deep appreciation for Overtoon’s crucial role in the field. To be entrusted with the stewardship of this organization is a great privilege and responsibility. In imagining new horizons, I look forward to drawing on and entwining the vast archive of Overtoon's history, the work of local and international practitioners, and my own artistic and theoretical preoccupations. I am thrilled by the prospect of offering and maintaining a creative, reflexive, and inclusive space for sound."

Annelies Van den Berghe, president of the board of Overtoon: "With the unanimous choice for Bill Dietz, the hiring committee has put its trust in someone with an impressive track record in creating work centered on sound and its creative and discursive possibilities. His professional experiences and institutional ideas seem right to renew Overtoon and place it in new ways toward the future, while simultaneously also having lots of respect for the vision of its founding directors and the great work they have carried out in the past period."

The board of Overtoon adopted the recommendations of the hiring committee consisting of Annelies Van den Berghe, Barbara Raes, Linnea Semmerling, and Niels Van Tomme in November 2022 and unanimously appointed Bill Dietz as the new artistic director of Overtoon.

Bill can be reached at bill@overtoon.org.