Irmin Schmidt

Before joining Can, Schmidt studied composition with composers as György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Henri Pousseur, Earle Brown, and István Kertész. He started work mainly as a conductor performing concerts with the Bochumer Symphoniker, the Vienna Symphony, and the Dortmunder Ensemble für Neue Musik that he had founded. During this time, Schmidt conducted the German premiere of John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis with the Bochumer Symphoniker. By 1966 Schmidt became Kapellmeister at the Theater Aachen and taught vocal technique at the Schauspielschule Bochum.
From the early 1980s, Schmidt produced soundtrack compositions for films such as Knife in the Head (1978) and Palermo Shooting (2008). Additionally, he has recorded solo albums and written an opera, Gormenghast, based on Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy. He received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier) in 2015 and Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2025.