Dechanatstraße

The Music Faculty at the University of the Arts Bremen is located in the heart of the old city in Bremen at Dechanatstraße. Formerly housing a school, the building is protected as an historic landmark and provides halls for concerts and musical performances, as well as rooms for ensembles, teaching and practice sessions with modern equipment. There also is a cafeteria and a music club in the basement, the Musikkeller, as well as an old observatory and an organ tower at Dechanatstraße. By staging more that 300 public concerts in all kinds of genres, the Music Faculty is contributing to the cultural offerings in Bremen in significant ways. These events also give the larger community of the city many opportunities to experience the special atmosphere, as well as the richly diverse music programme at the University.

As the Music Faculty is situated smack in the centre of the “cultural corridor” in Bremen between the neighbourhoods of Bremer Viertel, Schlachte and the downtown, many people come across the music played by HfK students simply by chance. Important cultural institutions such as the Konzerthaus Glocke, the Kunsthalle, the Theater Bremen, the Gerhard Marcks-Haus and the Wilhelm Wagenfeld-Haus are near by, as are the town square, St. Petri Dom and city hall. Business people, museum goers and anybody who just happens to walk by are all coming across our location at Dechanatstraße, just as tourists do while they explore the old city of Bremen.

The Music Faculty moved into the premises in the old city in the early 1990s. The three-storey building at Dechanatstraße had been constructed from 1872 to 1875 in the historicising style of late classicism and has been placed under historical preservation in 1984. Centrally located, the building was the home of the oldest school of Bremen, the Alte Gymnasium, until 1987. The building then has been restored with loving attention and remodelled according to the needs of a music academy. The location now is equipped with a concert hall, a hall for chamber music performances, a recording studio, practice rooms up to the latest standards, as well as spacious rooms for ensembles and practice playing. The recording studio provides all the equipment for producing recordings and recording concerts on a professional level. The Music Faculty is also benefitting by being situated in the centre of an area richly endowed with musical organs, more than 200 of these instruments that have been played by generations of our students. The HfK had a new tower organ constructed in 2010. The instrument is located at an octagonal tower at the building at Dechanatstraße, an historical astronomical observatory that provides a view across the roofs of the neighbourhood known as the Schnoorviertel. The facility also has become the home of the Klaus-Kuhnke-Institute.

After undergoing remodelling for a year and a half, our music club Musikkeller reopened and has since become a vital location in the musical landscape of Bremen. The atmospheric vaults provide a perfect setting to experience a broad range of musical expressions from early music to electro-acoustical performances, and from opera singing to piano concerts and jazz up-close and personally. The HfK Jazzclub returns on a regular basis to the Musikkeller, inviting audiences to listen and also to participate actively. The club is directed by restaurateur and owner of “Küche13”, Jan-Philipp Iwersen, who also runs the eatery Mensa13 at the Musikkeller, thereby launching a new meeting point for excellent cuisine and concerts in Bremen.

Downtown Bremen is undergoing positive changes and the HfK is living up to our mission as a laboratory for creativity by contributing to the revitalisation of the city with an eye on orienting it beyond consumerism. In that spirit, the University has worked together with other personalities and institutions in the cultural scene of Bremen by initiating the Open Space Domshof. The HfK has become an essential contributor to the cultural programmes there with numerous concerts.

University of the Arts Bremen
Dechanatstraße 13–15
28195 Bremen

The HfK is barrier-free to a limited extent at the Dechanatstraße location.

The entire building is fully accessible via two lifts, in the west wing and in the middle wing, from the basement to the 2nd floor. Due to a height offset on the ground floor, the toilet for people with limited mobility can only be reached barrier-free from the entrance via the basement and the 1st floor.

Public disabled parking spaces are designated on the street immediately adjacent to the courtyard entrance. In addition, a disabled parking space can be allocated on the premises by the caretakers and the security service. The colleagues can be reached by telephone at +49 421 9595-1400.