The Ministry of Wolves

The Ministry of Wolves came together as an international musical collective to supply the live score for a stage adaptation of Republik der Wölfe, itself a reinterpretation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales filtered through Anne Sexton’s Transformations, her volume of poems based on those stories. Claudia Bauer directed the production and enlisted Paul Wallfisch, the musical director of Theater Dortmund and formerly of Firewater and Botanica, to assemble a group capable of performing alongside the cast. Wallfisch recruited Mick Harvey, previously associated with Crime & the City Solution, the Birthday Party, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, along with two active members of Crime & the City Solution: Alexander Hacke, once of Einstürzende Neubauten, and Danielle de Picciotto. Their first release, Music from Republik der Wölfe, surfaced on Mute in the U.K. during March 2014 and reached the rest of the world the following month. A further set of Grimm-inspired material, Happily Ever After, followed in the autumn of 2014.