Ralf Schmid is a pianist, arranger, composer, big band leader, and seeker of new sounds and techniques. He has performed internationally as a soloist and with his ensemble, Bossarenova Trio. He’s led the big bands of Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Stuttgart and Frankfurt and has collaborated with musicians of various genres including Whitney Houston, Daniel Hope, Herbie Hancock, Natalie Cole, and many more. His musical theater piece “A Distant Drum” was premiered at Carnegie Hall and in South Africa. Most recently, he has been performing shows that involve two grand pianos and two gloves equipped with digital sensors that allow him to create live effects using gestures in the air; in 2019 he used this setup to record his solo album Pyanook.

Ralf is a prolific YouTuber and Instagrammer, and during the lockdown of 2020, he began a live stream series of remote song collaborations with singer Paula Morelenbaum among others, and a series called ‘soil music,’ which draws attention to the current climate crisis.

This conversation took place on November 22nd, 2021.

We spoke to him about:

• Spontaneous music-making in the family as a child
• Reading the room
• Switching roles between ‘captains’ and followers in an ensemble
• Letting go of expectations to maintain artistic integrity
• When technical things go wrong
• Vulnerability as a performer
• Developing his show Pyanook with 2 grand pianos on stage
• Working with ensembles that improvise and use live electronics
• His new piano concerto
• Music as a mirror of our present reality
• Creativity as a means of activism
• Finding his message as a soloist
• Life as a musician in New York in the 1990s
• Striving for more equality and diversity in positions of power

Check out his recently released single Soil Music

Emma-Louise Jordan is a dancer and a choreographer. Originally from the UK, she studied classical dance in London at the Legat School of Russian ballet and at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. As a dancer, she toured Europe with the Midlands Dance Company and the Vienna Festival Ballet and danced in Germany with Ballet Schindowski in Gelsenkirchen, Tanzwerk Nürnberg, and Theater Dortmund, among others. In 1999, she joined the Theater Freiburg with Amanda Miller and the interdisciplinary ballet company Pretty Ugly. Her work as a director and choreographer is not only full of wit and charm, but is also often deeply moving. Emma-Louise works with not just professionals but also amateurs: elderly people, teenagers, and people with and without disabilities. She truly has a gift for helping people express themselves, and we are incredibly lucky to call her our colleague at the Music University of Freiburg.

This conversation with Emma-Louise Jordan took place on December 15th, 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We spoke to her about:

Emma’s start in the dance world

Not getting into the Royal Ballet and how that changed her life for the better

Discovering modern dance

Being more ambitious about dance than career

The association of classical music with perfect ballet technique

“Functioning” as a dancer beyond the body’s capacity

Learning how to channel her energy to her best use

Working with non-professionals and their refreshing lack of baggage, how it is “almost more of a handicap to have this training”

The utopia of having no exams for dance in a music school

Connecting to breathing

Gyrokinesis®: touching and resonating in the body

Beginning to use her voice after finishing her dance career: movement becoming more creative by voicing things

How she ‘tricks herself’ out of her own habits of creativity

How she facilitates creativity for amateurs, tricking people out of being self-conscious

Integrating music into dance

Giving people security to allow for experimentation

Keeping people in intense movement so they will stay in their bodies, not just in their heads

Some of Emma’s favorite music:

Gavin Bryars: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Bon Iver: Blindsided

Portico Quartet: Knee-Deep in the North Sea

J.S. Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BW 244

J.S. Bach: The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, Glen Gould

The Swingle Singers: Jazz Sebastian Bach

Our conversation with Johannes Schöllhorn, composer and professor of composition at the Music University of Freiburg, is at turns deeply philosophical, thought-provoking, and playful.

Johannes Schöllhorn is a prolific composer, a conductor of leading ensembles and orchestras around the world, and also a teacher. His many compositions include works for musical theater, orchestra, chamber music ensembles, solo players, and original arrangements and instrumentations.

This conversation took place on November 8th, 2021, and we spoke to him about:

• His very first experience with music
• Being IN sound as opposed to listening TO it
• Creating special moments for the ear when viewing art
• What he would have done if he hadn’t become a musician
• Cultivating an “unconscious rhythm”
• The importance of dreams and being “out of time”
• Conceiving of art as a person
• Deep flaws in our music education system and why such a strong focus on the past is, in fact, a betrayal of the past
• Genius as a partner
• His interests outside of music, including writing a book!

His book Karte, Uhr und Partitur is now available.