NEWSLETTER 11/19

He is one of the outstanding conductors of our time and has been General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Chief Conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra since 2015.
Between two performances of Pelléas et Mélisande in November, Kent Nagano will visit the HfMT for the first time to work with our conducting students and the university orchestra for two days. At the end of the joint work, we will open the laboratory and present an Open Masterclass. Among the conductors will be Yu Sugimoto, who has just reached the final round of the Besançon International Conducting Competition, and Nicolas Kierdorf, who has been Artistic Director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Orchestra since this year.

We were able to ask Mr. Nagano about his idea of "conducting lessons" over the phone while he was waiting in Zurich for his connecting flight to Japan:
"I am interested in a deep mutual dialog with the students. I didn't bring any particular message with me, because in our profession we all arrive at the goals we set ourselves in radically different ways. What was important to me may be irrelevant to someone else. And yet professional and artistic dialog is very important, especially across generations. I myself have learned the most and most important things from working with and from colleagues.

The connection to the university is very close to the maestro's heart and he sees cooperation between cultural institutions as a matter of course in the 21st century. He therefore hopes that this first attempt will lay the foundations for a lasting collaboration.
Of course, we hope so too and are looking forward to Kent Nagano's visit with great anticipation!

With the urgent desire to escape the usual need for categorization, Fabia Mantwill landed in exactly the right place at the Dr. Langner Jazz Master. Here she found the freedom and flexibility to work across genres and countries.
"Are you actually a jazz, classical or pop musician? Saxophonist, singer or composer? Bandleader or conductor?" Such questions have always been too narrow for her. "Why not all of the above or none of the above?" For Fabia, there is basically only one maxim: I make the music at the time with the people it takes to express something as authentically as possible.

And in order to be completely self-sufficient and self-determined, she founded her own orchestra without further ado: The Fabia Mantwill Orchestra. With people who share her passion and curiosity and are prepared to engage in musical encounters of all kinds. Encounters III is also the title of their final concert in Halle 424 on November 15. And on this evening you will also learn something about Fabia's other passion and an important source of nourishment for her music: traveling. She prefers to travel extensively and with a rucksack to distant or nearby countries to immerse herself in foreign cultures and draw inspiration from them. This time her musical luggage includes Ghana, Nepal, Tanzania and France.

When Joël Vuik first completed his Bachelor of Music in Education and was still studying baritone, his singing teacher at the time recommended that he think about becoming a countertenor. He started researching and when he finally came across the "Erbarme Dich, mein Gott" from Bach's St. Matthew Passion with Andreas Scholl, he was hooked: "That's exactly where I wanted to be, and I had no idea at the time that this was one of the most difficult parts of all."

He set off and sought out his mentors. Musically, he always had a clear vision and his own ideas. One of the reasons he ended up in Hamburg and with Prof. Jörn Dopfer was because he had a plan for his voice right from the start "and I didn't really have one," admits Joël. The native Dutchman is now a much sought-after countertenor with engagements at the Dutch National Opera, the Hamburg State Opera and the Monteverdi Choir in Würzburg, for example. A scholarship from the Claussen Simon Foundation will enable him to gain additional qualifications in practical subjects such as law, tax and self-marketing over the next 1-2 years, but above all to work conceptually and realize interdisciplinary concert ideas.

On November 27, Joël can be heard with his concert exam at the Rudolf Steiner Haus. He will be joined by the Mirror Strings ensemble with two cellos and two guitars, with whom he feels musically on the same wavelength and for whom a special arrangement has been written. You can get an impression of his singing skills in advance on his own youtube channel.

"It's nice to see how much fun they have". We are currently talking about 14 participants in a further training course in early music education, which is run by our Elementary Music Pedagogy (EMP) department. The course is aimed at immigrant musicians and music teachers with and without refugee experience as well as educators from German daycare centers and is based on the tandem principle.

The great need for music education specialists in daycare centers on the one hand and the need to give immigrants an opportunity to integrate into their learned professions on the other combine to create a classic win-win situation.

The one-year training course includes five weekend seminars, two intensive weeks, a practical project in a daycare center and a final certificate.
The different backgrounds give the group a heterogeneity that is both challenging and enriching: Learning from and with each other is at the forefront of the seminar work here. "It has to remain exciting for everyone," says project coordinator Alexander Riedmüller.

You can find more information and a worthwhile report from 2017 here.
We wish all participants an enriching seminar weekend!

Iga Osowska, a native of Flensburg, is currently studying jazz singing with Ken Norris at the HfMT in her 5th bachelor semester and can be heard with her quartet at the Theater im Zimmer on 13.11.

Her recommendation for November:

NEON - Contemporary Gayageum on November 15
Gayageum. What is that? I had to look it up when I read the name of the event. Gayageum is a so-called arched board zither, which is the most representative instrument of traditional Korean music culture. In addition to the unfamiliar word, the term 'NEON' and the event image - designed in a modern gray-pink - caught my attention. This fusion of tradition and modernity, which is already reflected in the poster, is also reflected in the concert content. Here, two Korean musicians present electronic sounds combined with the traditional sound of the gayageum.

Enjoy the concert!