New Concert Formats for a Diverse Audience
My Erasmus teaching residency at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München
At the invitation of Prof. Sonja Stibi, I made my second visit to Munich’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HMTM) from 16 to 18 May as part of an Erasmus Teaching Mobility. The Teaching Mobility took place together with students from Munich and Vienna as part of the inter-university course titled “Theorie und Praxis von Musikvermittlung und Community Music” (Theory and Practice of Music Mediation and Community Music), which in the summer semester explored the subject of new concert formats.
The HMTM is housed in a place that played a role in one of the darkest chapters of German history: the so-called “Führerbunker”, where the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938. After our arrival, Dr Tobias Reichard, director of the Ben-Haim-Forschungszentrum, gave us a tour of the building and provided us with very knowledgeable and expert information about its architecture and historical background. By means of artistic interventions, historic contextualisation, and social-political statements, the university is committed to conducting a critical exploration of this fraught legacy.
The seminars I held during my stay focused on the topics of concert design, artistic participation, and cultural democracy. During a visit to the Bayrische Staatsoper, I also had the opportunity to engage in discussions with the general director, Serge Dorny, and with the director of the Communities und Kind & Co departmentabout questions relating to the social responsibility of publicly subsidised cultural institutions and strategies of openness and transformation. Finally, we visited the final round of the university’s XPLORE competition for new concert formats.
My second Erasmus teaching residency at the HMTM was thus again tremendously enriching for me in many respects. I was able to further deepen my collaboration with Prof. Sonja Stibi, and we are already considering what our next joint undertakings could be.
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