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Name: Stepha Schweiger
Nationality: German
Occupation: Composer, singer-songwriter, pianist, producer
Recent Release: Stepha Schweiger's album with The Moon Is No Door, Tiny Moment, is out via L'ST.
Recommendations: Lili Boulanger: “Vieille prière bouddhique”

If you enjoyed this interview with Stepha Schweiger and would like to find out more about her work, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

Music was important to just a few of my family members. But one of them was very close to my heart, was a passionate singer, zither-player and guitarist and made music with me from an early age in everyday situations, and got me to sing and learn the piano.

I was involved in musical performances, and both saw and participated in numerous pageants with musical elements.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Whenever music really touches me, shivers of excitement go through my body and I become spellbound.

But when I compose, I don’t listen to any music because I need absolute silence.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

As a child, I started making music and performing. This evolved into piano and guitar recitals, along with singing. When I started writing songs at the age of 15, I immediately portrayed social situations I had observed in the city of Regensburg.

The challenge to bring my music to a wider audience came with the opportunity to perform with and establish a great New Wave Punk Band. This was kind of rebellion, but most likely the continuation of my musical calling.

Even after I had moved to Berlin and started to be a composer of music theatre, electronic and orchestral works, my primordial love for punk and rebellion stayed in my heart, right up to this day.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I like to transcend and go away from where I am, supported by my feelings and imagination. I work best when I stay where I am, while at the same time remaining open to new and unfamiliar experiences.

That’s why, when it comes to my art, I am conceptual, minimalistic, experimental, extreme and expressive.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

I stay as simple as possible, and am as powerful, extreme and expressive as necessary to communicate what I need to say.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Nowadays, questioning what tradition is good for is more important than ever, thinking of the extreme changes ahead of us, and knowing that history has also led us to where we are.

Now that we are familiar with the consequences of imperialistic structures, a futuristic approach is highly necessary: being ever more paradigmatic through art and attitudes.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools – and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I grew up with detuned pianos and instruments tuned in slightly different ways by chance, which I found remarkable. This fact still influences me a lot.

Open parameters of tuning can create open-minded situations. With respect to the future, this means: For a long time, we retained tuning practices which were developed in the 17th/18th century, if not since ancient times. Now we need to find new ways, and become more experimental and open.

Like with our planet.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Day A: I get up, run to my computer and stay there until evening, only tending to bureaucratic tasks and work for labels, concerts, commissions and so on.

Day B: I get up, walk slowly to my piano and desk and let the unconscious flow into my actual composition, check out new ideas, write them down … Then I have breakfast and come back to the piano.

Several breaks during the day and, whenever possible, I compose till late into the night or early morning.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

Let's take the debut album Tiny Moment of the new band The Moon Is No Door, released on August 26, 2022 and mixed by Dirk Dresselhaus.

The music was created over years without knowing what the final production would look like - the only thing that was certain was that it should be played by the right band formation. Robert Pepe Pöschl – the bass player and arranger of the album - and I, we were looking for a band format for more than 10 years.

In 2013 we formed the impro band Girl on Catfish with guitarist Mane Schimchen and drummer Mäx Huber and played intense sessions. In 2019 I founded a band formation that became The Moon Is No Door in 2021 with Robert Pepe Pöschl, Mäx Huber and double bassist Adam Goodwin to perform my songs.

I invent the music whenever it happens, not knowing in advance, that today I will create a particular idea for a new song. Then the song evolves over weeks, sometimes just days, depending on the kind of sentimental flow and “leisure” time I can afford alongside routine activities, where that particular new song accompanies me, rearing its head again and again.

Nevertheless, I rewrote “Bubbles I Blow”, which is part of the album, again and again, with breaks of a few years in between, for example. But the song “Tiny Moment” evolved much faster. New melodies and harmonies accompany me through everyday life with all its little and large complexities or problems. “At best”, the new song helps me feel free and pure. It's constantly on my mind, like a savior.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I like both. Solitary can be deep and reflective, while communal and collaborative are more empathic and associated with friendships, and spontaneous feelings and kicks.

Although, friends accompany me as well when I’m alone. New relationships develop with artists from former ages – in both constellations, private and social – and engender ideas for the artistic approaches of the future.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

My musical, theatrical and philosophical creativity is partly inspired by events, decisions and actions of a political and social nature. And my art is designed to trigger reflection and change via its themes and aesthetics.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I am unable to understand these issues, I am unable to understand life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more sensations like happiness, joy, feelings and so on. My creativity is influenced by these feelings, although I am unaware when and how.

Usually, after composing smaller parts of a larger work, I notice that I must have been in a special deep creative mood. This was particularly the case after my father passed away.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Music is like science. But science is not music. Science helps in discovering more about the physical parameters of music.

Our bodies’ chemical reaction to music is extremely interesting and thankfully not fully researched.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

My musicmaking is strongly connected to the first five years of my life, when I decided to become a musician.

I experienced two totally contrasting backgrounds on the two sides of my family. One consisted of something like love, but full of hard work at the same time, while the other was empty, insecure, lacking in emotion and harsh. This experience made me who I am, needing to make music.

This is what I realised after many years of revealing these demons inside of me.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

To understand these phenomena, I would like to think of early human beings who needed to listen and decipher what is a brutal animal, and what is a tree. The correct interpretation of surrounding sounds was necessary to orientate oneself and to survive, especially at night. This was and still is the case today when we walk down the street, for example.

Everything beyond this functionalistic approach to hearing seems like a miracle, based on eternal, strong feelings for social, joyful and mournful expression.