Events
Events

Future Talk in Leipzig: Building a Network

Very excited to chair a panel discussion at Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig next week! As part of the Future Talks series of Netzwerk Musikhochschulen 4.0, we will discuss questions of studying music, starting a career as a freelance musician, networking, and vocational representation with people from music universities, professional associations, and politics. My dialogue partners will be Sebastian Haas, Lisa Mangold, Andrea Tober, Andreas Hammer, and Oliver Fritzsche. You can join the subsequent public discussion if interested (please register at mentoring@hmt-leipzig.de), or follow the event via the YouTube livestream. Many thanks to Carmen Maria Thiel and the Mentoring Arts programme for the invitation!

» Thursday, 23 March 2023, 2 pm, at HMT Leipzig, Probesaal, Grassistraße 8, 04107 Leipzig
» For more info see this website, and the livestream will be available here

Types and Prototypes: Study Day in Hamburg

This month is already bursting with music conferences and symposia, but the following event could indeed be worthwile to experience: Together with Patrick Becker and Roberta Vidic I am co-organising a hybrid study day, titled Types and Prototypes: Towards a Theory of Compositional Models in East-European Music, which will focus on theories of Satzmodelle and schemata in the repertoire in question. It is hosted by Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and will take place both on-site and remotely via Zoom next Saturday, 18 February, 3–8 pm.

We are glad to have a promising line-up of presenters, including musicologists and music theorists from four different countries: Bart de Graaf (Amsterdam), Inna Klause (Hannover), Olha Kushniruk (Cambridge), Rebecca Mitchell (Vermont), and Jeff Yunek (Georgia). The study day will be chaired by Christoph Flamm (Heidelberg). Everybody interested is cordially invited to participate—please see this website for information on how to register.

Schicksalslieder with Vokalsystem Berlin

Another intriguing choral weekend lies behind me, having performed music by Melissa Dunphy, Ēriks Ešenvalds, and Johannes Brahms with Vokalsystem Berlin, Johannes David Wolff and Adrian Heger at Martin-Luther-Kirche Neukölln in two subsequent concerts on 11 and 12 February. It’s been a fascinating event, taking place in sort of an enhanced-reality setting, featuring illumination, fog, and immersive surround vocalisation. Already looking forward to our next rehearsal period!

Brahms, Hölderlin, and Schiller

So glad to appear in a choral-symphonic concert again next Sunday, 22 January, performing Brahms’s Schicksalslied, Op. 54, and Nänie, Op. 82, with Vokalsystem Berlin, Enchore, and Berliner Sibelius Orchester, alongside orchestral music by Verdi and Sibelius. This will also be the conducting debut of my dear colleague Johannes David Wolff in the Grand Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie. There are still some tickets left—I’d be delighted to see you there!

Spellbinding Silvestrov

It’s been such a pleasure to be an inconspicuous part of the audience and watch Valentin Silvestrov listen to his own pieces being performed on stage. This experience made me feel a proximity of both physical and spiritual nature, a certain unity with the music and its creator, while submerging in that continuous stream of sound, largely devoid of contours and contrasts, which seemed that it might go on eternally. Thank you, Viktoriia Vitrenko, Alexei Lubimov, and Pianosalon Christophori for making this happen just two miles from my place!