MAY 2025

With the World Sound Festival as a further component of our 75th university anniversary, we are celebrating pretty much everything that can be celebrated: We are still celebrating our own birthday, we are celebrating music and related as well as appropriate art forms, we are celebrating diversity and understanding, family and togetherness, tradition as well as modernity in all parts of this world, following the ideas and expertise of our teaching staff and students from over 40 nations, who all bring their own musical roots, languages and stories with them.

And so, above all, we celebrate the fact that we don't draw borders... in a grand, joyful gesture that takes us from the afternoon through the evening into the night and invites us to listen, discover, marvel and linger together.

Anyone familiar with our sound nights will know: all rooms are wide open, with around 30 events to choose from. A new feature is the family afternoon with lots of hands-on activities. Guests from various Hamburg communities will be making music with us. If that sounds like a buzz, it could well be. In any case, it's a worthy activity for all those spending the long weekend in Hamburg. You are most welcome!

Many thanks to Prof. Frank Böhme, who has put all this together with a tireless spirit!

World Sound Festival on May 1:
Family afternoon from 2-5 pm
Sound Night from 7-24 pm

After the "all-encompassing" Klang-Fest, our focus is on the European organ traditions in the Weimar sources. The conference J.S. Bach im Mittelpunkt, which will take place at the HfMT and in the main church of St. Katharinen, will bring together scholars and artists to open up new perspectives on research and interpretation.

We are particularly looking forward to the participation of Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Peter Wollny, Director of the Leipzig Bach Archive, who will give an evening lecture in the JazzHall on May 2. Peter Wollny has headed the research department of the Bach Archive since 2001 and is one of the world's leading experts in Bach research.
In addition to the specialist audience, the interested public is also cordially invited!

Symposium: Focus on J. S. Bach from May 2-3

And once again in the matter of the anniversary with a little genealogical research: in a tribute to Philipp Jarnach, we pay tribute to the founding director of our university as an important composer and significant teacher of his time.
Prof. Tanja Becker-Bender has put together a fine chamber concert with a great deal of energy and passion, in which students and teachers as well as Lucie Jarnach - pianist and granddaughter of the composer - will perform this precious music, which must be heard.

In the course of the preparations, Tanja Becker-Bender was inspired by a few quotes that reveal Philipp Jarnach's deeply human attitude and his modern and open-minded approach as a teacher in an artistic context:
"You will always recognize an artist by the fact that he (whatever task he devotes himself to) never wants or seeks anything else with his work than one thing: to create beauty. .... Beauty, as he thinks, feels and understands it, means for him the visualization of a truth..."
And in the words of his student Walter Steffens: "What immediately inspired me about Jarnach's teaching method was his great tolerance, which gave each of his students the right to stylistic individuality."

Homage to Philipp Jarnach on May 5
The concert is being held in cooperation with the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg.

On April 22, our new colleague in musicology, Prof. Dr. Jutta Toelle, gave her inaugural lecture and, with her talk Coram publico, made some promising reflections on the relationship between performers and their audience. Questions such as "What do people look for in a concert? And what do they get? How can we attract people to the concert, especially those who feel out of place there? What should such a concert look like?" drive her and lead her to research that circulates and mediates between the audience and the performers.

The inaugural lecture also marked the start of the Current Practices lecture series, in which current practices are presented and discussed, as well as provided with musical interludes.
Please feel warmly invited to attend and literally taken to the center (of the reflections).

Current Practices lecture series - next event on May 6

We are still very enthusiastic about our last collaboration with the Hamburg Ballet and can now look forward to our next encounter: this time, the Hamburg Chamber Ballet - created in 2022 as a small company of displaced Ukrainian dancers to offer them a new artistic home - is visiting us.

When jazz music meets ballet, the result is a fascinating fusion of rhythm, improvisation and choreographic precision. Australian guitarist Danica Hobden combines powerful rhythms, spherical melodies and spontaneous improvisations in her music. These worlds of sound merge with the expressive energy of the Ukrainian dancers of the Hamburg Chamber Ballet under the artistic direction of Edvin Revazov, soloist of the Hamburg Ballet.

Hamburg Chamber Ballet and Danica Hobden on May 11

Together we celebrate diversity, because it is not just a buzzword, but the heart of our collaboration and creative development at an artistic and scientific university.

On this year's German Diversity Day, we are celebrating diverse voices! You can expect an inspiring keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Michael Grünberger, President of Bucerius Law School, a musical highlight with HfMT alumna Derya Yıldırım as well as diverse artistic contributions and positions by HfMT students that invite you to reflect, think further and celebrate.

Celebrate diverse Voices on May 27

We will be amazed on May 16 with 1, 3 & 4 harpsichords when we move into the not-too-large Mendelssohn Hall with four harpsichords and let ourselves be infected by the concentrated joy of playing with which a baroque ensemble of students, teachers and guests will perform some of Johann Sebastian Bach's harpsichord concertos.

With a vernissage & concert on May 28, we will trace the spirit and vision of György Ligeti, who in his Hamburg years pursued the idea of an institute for research, art and mediation and thus laid the foundation for today's ligeti zentrum.

From May 30 at Kampnagel, directing student Alina Sobotta will be showing her final project LENZ, based on Georg Büchner, as a disastrous descent between utopia and horror.

And in Windfuhr's workshop concert on May 31, we will perform three more concert exams with the Lüneburg Symphony Orchestra at Gut Wienebüttel.

We conclude our newsletter with an outlook for June and a great offer for our supporters.

From June 1, it's summer opera time again. The program includes the Dialogues des Carmélites by Francis Poulenc. From the current issue of zwoelf: "Even though the story is set in a bygone era (1794 at the time of the French Revolution), the intense conversations between the Carmelites address questions that are also pressing in our time: How should we deal with individual and collective fear in the face of current threats? One thing is certain - there is a need for dialog in order to work together as a community. This is the focus of this year's summer opera production."

We are offering our wonderful supporters free tickets for the premiere (A premiere on June 1 or B premiere on June 6). Please contact us by May 10 at hochschulstiftung.supporter@hfmt-hamburg.de.
People who would like to become supporters can find all the valuable information HERE.

...can be found as usual in our calendar of events. For a better overview, in-depth insights and a comprehensive range of topics relating to our anniversary, we highly recommend our current issue of zwoelf as an e-paper or as a print edition, which we will of course be happy to deliver to you free of charge.