David Riebe (born 1988) grew up in Torna Hällestad outside Lund in southern Sweden. At the age of five he started playing the violin and when he was nine he began to take lessons at Kulturskolan (school for music and arts) in Lund. His interest in composing has always been present and as a high school exam project he composed a violin concerto.

     After high school, he studied two years at the conservatoire program of Kulturskolan (2007-2009), with composition and violin as main subjects. At the same time he studied musicology at Lund University.

Riebe received both his Bachelor's Degree and his Master's Degree in composition at the Malmö Academy of Music (Lund University) where he studied 2009-2015 after also having been accepted at the academies in Stockholm and Gothenburg. His teachers were Luca Francesconi, Rolf Martinsson, Staffan Storm and Kent Olofsson, among others. During autumn 2014 he studied with Michele Tadini and Philippe Hurel at Conservatoire National Supérieur Musique et Dance in Lyon. He also has a degree in musicology from Lund University (2014).

Since 2015 Riebe is a member of FST, Föreningen Svenska Tonsättare (The Society of Swedish Composers).

Riebe's orchestral music has been performed by Malmö Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, Uppsala Chamber Orchestra, Västerås Sinfonietta, Musica Vitae, Jönköping Sinfonietta and the Swedish Wind Ensemble (Stockholms läns blåsarsymfoniker). He has an ongoing collaboration with the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, financed by the Swedish Art Council (Kulturrådet) and since several years he has also been collaborating with Grammy-nominated British violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved as well as the Swedish pianist Fredrik Schützer. He has also composed music for Trio Poing (Norway), New European Ensemble (the Netherlands), Ensemble Nordlys (Denmark) and the London-based Kreutzer Quartet. During his study years, Riebe's music was performed and recorded by the BBC Singers at the Maida Vale Studios in London.

Riebe’s music has been selected twice to be included in the Presentation Days for New Swedish Orchestral Music organized by the Society of Swedish Composers, most recently in 2022 when his piece The Child and the Birth of the New Man was performed by Västerås Sinfonietta. Previously, his string orchestra piece Drops of Stem Cells was performed at the 2017 Presentation Day.

In 2016 Riebe won Third Prize at the Andrey Petrov Composition Competition in Saint Petersburg, with the orchestral piece Magma. The six selected finalists had their compositions performed by St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra during a concert in St. Petersburg Grand Philharmonic Hall.

     He also won the Second Prize at Uppsala Tonsättartävling (Uppsala Composition Competition) in 2014 with his sinfonietta piece Geopoliticus Child, performed by Uppsala Chamber Orchestra.

Riebe has received the Working Grant of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee twice, the STIM Grant (STIM-stipendium), the composition scholarship of the Annik and Lars Leander foundation, the local grant of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and the Culture Grant of the city of Lund.

He has also received commissions from Lunds Stadsorkester, Odeum Music Center at Lund University, and Akademiska Kapellet (Lund University Academic Orchestra), and he had a long collaboration with the Nordic Youth Orchestra which premiered his music in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Riebe has worked with conductors such as Mika Eichenholz, Paul Mägi, Ruth Reinhardt, B. Tommy Andersson, Stefan Solyom, Michael Bartosch, Leif Karlsson, Arkady Steinlucht, Christian Karlsen, Andreas Lönnqvist, Christoffer Nobin, Patrik Andersson and Cecilia Martin-Löf. Outside Sweden, his music has been performed in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, Norway, Denmark, and Turkey.

Since 2016, Riebe is Artistic Director of Lund Contemporary, a festival for contemporary music in Lund with Lund University as main organizer.

CV:s in Swedish and English are available in PDF format.