Kevin Volans (born 26 July 1949) is a South African born Irish composer and pianist. He studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in Cologne in the 1970s and later became associated with the Neue Einfacheit (New Simplicity) movement in the city. In the late 1970s he became interested in the indigenous music of his homeland and began a series of pieces which attempted to combine aspects of African and contemporary European music. Although Volans later moved away from any direct engagement with African music, certain residual elements such as interlocking rhythms, repetition and open forms are still detectable in his music since the early 1990s which takes a new direction more redolent of certain schools of abstract art. He settled in Ireland permanently in 1986 and was granted Irish citizenship in 1995. Biography During his teenage years Volans developed an interest in the music of the post-war avant garde as well as abstract painting. He pursued a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of the Witwatersrand graduating in 1972. After postgraduate study at the University of Aberdeen he moved in 1973 to Cologne, where he became one of only five students admitted to Stockhausen's composition class at the Musikhochschule. He became intimately acquainted with Stockhausen's extensions of serial technique and eventually became his teaching assistant in 1975–76, replacing Richard Toop. He also took lessons in music theatre from Mauricio Kagel as well as taking piano lessons from Aloys Kontarsky and studying electronic music with Hans-Ulrich Humpert. While in Cologne Volans became increasingly dissatisfied with the new-music movement in the city, which he perceived to be dogmatic and creatively restricting. Alongside other composers such as Walter Zimmermann, Gerald Barry, and Michael von Biel, Volans began to question the hegemony of the prevailing new-music style that was based on an extension of the serial techniques of the previous generation. This group of composers, loosely referred to as the Cologne School, marked the start of the Neue Einfachheit (New Simplicity) movement which began with a concert series organised by Zimmermann in January 1977. Composers linked with the New Simplicity generally sought a more transparent and direct style, an openness to aspects of tonality and a freedom to use pre-existing material quite in contrast to the intense abstraction of the post-war avant garde. Africa series Despite having grown up in South Africa, Volans had little contact with the indigenous music of his