Out of Rich Darkness C Savage-Kroll and E Cheah

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


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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




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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.




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Cathy Milliken is an oboist, composer, and visionary educator who takes great joy in facilitating creativity and participation. She has won international recognition as a leading composer, creative director, performer and educational program consultant. She was a founding member of the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt.

As a composer, she has been commissioned by the Berliner Staatsoper, Donaueschinger Musiktage, South Bank Centre London, The Experimental Electronic Studio of Freiburg, Concerto Köln, and Musica Viva of Munich, to name just a few of many.

From 2005 – 2012, Cathy Milliken was Director of the Education Program of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Participatory compositional projects in recent years have taken her to South Africa, Japan, and Oman. She is part of the creative team for the Munich Biennale for Music Theatre and serves as an honorary member of advisory boards for the German Music Council and the Goethe Institute. Her collaborative composition Stadtlied (City Song) was premiered in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg in 2019.

Elena last saw Cathy in October 2020 at the Radialsystem in Berlin, where her work Ode for All was premiered as part of a celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. It was originally supposed to be a work for six female choirs from across Eastern Europe all composing and improvising their own odes to joy, and in the end, because of the pandemic, it became a video installation featuring the soloists of those choirs, which was very moving.

In this episode, we talk about:


How the pandemic influenced her listening and creating
Working with female choirs from Eastern Europe in her project Ode for All
Meeting in Istanbul (watch the video)
“Improvisers” vs. “readers”
Bringing very different people together to create new synergies
How she got into facilitating composition
Her book Zukunft@Bphil
How the design of a project should be like a composition
Planning a project the way you would plan a party to make everyone feel welcome and valuable: have a structure and then throw it away if necessary
The importance of having enough time in order to transport people out of their everyday
How improvising helps all performers, even if it’s only playing in your own room
The importance of good friends to help pick you up if a concert didn’t go so well, and of people who challenge you
Knowing the difference between challenging and destructive
Prejudice, intentional or not, against female composers
Switching from creator to performer


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We were thrilled to have Johnny Gandelsman on our podcast. Elena first met Johnny in the late 1990s and he has made a fascinating career ever since.

As a founding member of Brooklyn Rider and a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, Johnny has closely worked with such luminaries as Bela Fleck, Martin Hayes, Kayhan Kalhor, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Morris, Anne Sofie Van Otter, Alim Qasimov & Fargana Qasimova, Joshua Redman, Suzanne Vega, Abigail Washburn and Damian Woetzel. He has appeared with Bono, David Byrne, Renee Fleming, Rhiannon Giddens, I'm With Her, Christian McBride, and many others.

Here are some of the topics we covered in this long and fascinating conversation:


The Russian school of violin playing and crying in lessons
The Wild Ginger Philharmonic, a student-founded orchestra Elena and Johnny both played in in the 1990s, and how the innovative aspects of it influenced how he makes music now
How he approaches music education for his own children— music and soccer and pure passion for childhood pursuits
Missing out on childhood and choosing your own path
“There isn’t some higher being that knows everything there is to know about how to play Mozart or Beethoven and they will tell you and then you’ll do it and you’ll be perfect.”
What is the ‘right way’ to interpret a score? Curiosity and inquiry in interpretation
Brooklyn Rider’s omnivorous approach to music-making and collaborations with amazing musicians from genres across the board
Different kinds of improvisation and learning to assimilate new styles
The Bach cello suites on the violin
What would a creative musical education look like?
Brooklyn RIder’s album Healing Modes, which asked 5 different composers what healing means to them in a variety of contexts
Celebrating great living composers and the joy of being able to ask them questions about their intentions
Bringing music into the middle of our lives and the power of just being in a room together with people
Performers taking their audiences for granted
“You cannot create magic without the active participation of the audience”
Taking risks in performance and creating memorable moments
Making the concert hall a place where people can really be themselves as they can at home while watching a livestream (but maybe with pants on)
Pandemic pursuits: sourdough baking, playing the ukulele, time with family

You can learn more about Johnny and find tour dates on his website: https://johnnygandelsman.com/


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In this episode, we talk about the importance of a nurtured community of people, or as Erin says, “framily,” supporting one another and setting intentions collectively, investing in the human beings around you, and knowing when to let go of relationships that are not nurturing. We discuss why cultivating passions outside of music and having friends who are not musicians is important, getting out of a limiting mindset, showing up for ourselves, and taking baby steps out of our comfort zones.

Erin is a creative powerhouse whose colorful resume includes major roles as an opera singer, producing live television, and making snow sculptures. We loved this conversation with her and so did our students, and we think you will too.


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