Part 2

Collaborations can take on many forms. What role do they play in your approach and what are your preferred ways of engaging with other creatives?

Often it starts with a glass of wine and throwing around ideas ...

I think collaborations are absolutely essential with the right kind of people – the “right kind” being a very subjective matter, with the right amount of common ground in the larger vision on one hand and the right amount of resistance in order to find new paths). I can honestly say that I depend on artistic exchange, I don’t think I could do what I’m doing in a sort of “hermit-artist's” lifestyle, although I often admire people who can do that.

Of course I need my space and time to explore, discover, study, develop in peace, but the energy to keep going always comes from encounters and engagement with other human beings, and especially other artists. However, there are so many ways of engagement, also with the artists that aren’t even among the living anymore, there are infinite sources of inspiration and they can take on very diverse forms. It might come from a painter, a writer, a movie, but also from “normal” life and the apparently very boring details of humane existence.

I keep remembering Pina Bausch who said about Wuppertal, the small and poor German city where she worked for decades and created her famous dance company: “I like living in this city. It has become my city, because it’s an everyday city, not a Sunday city. That’s important for our work.”

I personally find this valuable not just for her work, but for all artistic activity. To lose touch with human reality might be an interesting experiment, but how can it endure?

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?

Black tea with milk. The British way. That’s how everything starts … After that – the possibilities and the variations are endless. I offer one possible scenario.

Second cup of tea. Figuring out a way to hold open the pages of the book in front of me while gobbling down a müsli. Milk bottle too empty <> milk not heavy enough to hold down pages. It’s difficult. Looking at phone – late! Pack: phone-keys-wallet-scores-tuningkey&tuner. Run out. Check if key is REALLY in pocket before closing the door (experience …). Running down. Unlocking bike. Cycling (too fast & without helmet) to Residenz. Locking bike. Sweating while tuning harp. Playing difficult passages and chatting up colleagues. Oboe gives lovely A. Concentration!!

Rehearsing rehearsing rehearsing COFFEEEE! Rehearsing rehearsing rehearsing LUNCH!! Rehearsing rehearsing drawing colleagues rehearsing THE END!! last piece is without harp. Bike … Taking different route home because repetition is boring. Sofa wants to greet me. I greet sofa. Harp misses me. I give it some attention.

Stomach says AND ME?! I consult the kitchen. Kitchen offers what it has to offer, I offer the abilities I have to offer. We combine forces, stomach is happy. Neighbour-colleague-friends write “Wanna come over?” Wanna. Wine, music, laughter. Night air. Dreams: a bitten bike tire and a tomato tree.

Can you talk about a breakthrough work, event or performance in your career? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

A career, or rather: a life consists of so many single moments, experiences – it is full of colours and I wouldn’t be able or even want to pick out a single one.

Maybe one thing I can say is that I have a particular love for the music of Robert Schumann which I think will never leave me. Many of his pieces have an absolutely immediate effect on me, as if they proceeded directly into the centre of my soul, without barriers. On the other hand his work and his life also offer so much intellectual material. He is an immense source of inspiration, passion, love, poetry, humanity.

While I have ventured to play and even record some of his pieces that I feel wouldn’t lose (or might even gain) something from the colour the harp has to offer, above all I am immensely grateful to the artists that interpret his music so profoundly, as for example Christian Gerhaher or Isabelle Faust.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

Practising. It seems obvious, but I mean it – when getting into the “zone” while practising I feel like my thoughts also take flight. Also: train rides without getting stuck to ones phone (obvious distraction). Inspiring conversations. Great music.

But actually – similar to what Pina Bausch perhaps meant – an essential part to creativity is probably boredom. But because we tend to not allow ourselves to ever feel bored anymore (even our kids have to be kept busy all the time) we don’t give our minds the possibility to roam, or – even more exciting – push them to imagine the most fantastic things. I like to do this, on purpose and consciously, and to try to keep going, associating quickly and without ever stopping to linger with one particular thought, in order to follow a kind of James-Joyce-style “stream of conciousness”, but actively.

Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?

There are so many examples of “Trost”, of comfort and consolation, given by music. Bach for me (and I think many others) is maybe the greatest source of eternal and most profound Trost.

I would not want to give a judgement on the literal healing effects of music, simply because I don’t know enough about it. That music has a great effect on humans, from before leaving their mother’s womb until their deathbed, and that even animals react strongly to music, is out of the question. How far the effects of literal “music therapy” can go I don’t know, but of course it is very fascinating; Esperanza Spalding and her Songwright’s Apothecary Lab are a current stream in this direction that I find quite interesting.

I myself make music and love music because it is infinitely rich and infinitely varied, a mirror of humanity; it is an eternal challenge to mind and soul, the best form of expression for the inexpressible, a great source of inspiration.

I don’t see it as a “tool” for anything, but of course it is and has been used as such. Like anything, this can be for the good or for the bad.

Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work? What happens to sound at its outermost borders?

The first thing that came to my mind reading this question was a very special concert with Sir Simon Rattle in 2021, in which we performed “In Vain” by Georg Friedrich Haas.

This mesmerising 70 min piece contains two long passages that are played in total darkness, the musicians have to memorise their parts, the audience is reduced to ears. Already during the rehearsals, Sir Simon mentioned several times, how when the light turns off and only the music remains, one feels physically warmer, “like in the womb”, and I can absolutely confirm that. It is a thrilling sensation and there are many others like this.

Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?

The question of the social and political role that music can play is one that can fill books (and has done so), so I don’t feel capable of exploring this topic in a few sentences here.

I myself am active as a “cultural ambassador” for CASA HOGAR, a project that aims at providing education for girls in the Colombian crisis region Chocó, so of course in this context I “use” my voice as an artist for a social matter. This has however little to do with my approach to art. My approach to art … I’m hungry for it, I’m searching for it, I like to share my passion for it, I prefer living it than talking about it.

What can music express about life and death which words alone may not?

If words could express it, I would be able to name it here. Since they can not, I recommend listening to Bach!