Bertrand Gröger is the Honorary Conductor of the Jazzchor Freiburg, which he founded in 1990 and led for 36 years. Gröger has composed and arranged works for the Bamberger Symphoniker, the WDR-Rundfunkorchester, the Swingle Singers, and, among others, a large part of the Jazzchor Freiburg’s repertoire.
“With music, things become easier; they happen more quickly. A song can have the power of an icebreaker.” On July 2, 2026, Günter Graulich celebrates his 100th birthday. Finding the right words to describe this remarkable man, even after many years of acquaintance, is both difficult and surprisingly easy. Difficult, because it’s hard to capture the “polyphony” of his rich, colorful life, with his extraordinary range of professional and private pursuits – and yet easy, because Günter Graulich is such an approachable and engaging person!
A choir named after Beethoven? Admittedly, he didn’t leave behind an extensive choral repertoire. Tristan Meister, director of the Beethoven Choir Ludwigshafen since 2017, set out to explore this question by delving deep into Beethoven’s choral works.
I like to be inspired by greenery, sunlight, or rain.
As a child, I often lost myself in improvising on the piano, inventing music and then immediately forgetting it.
Nana Forte is a Slovenian composer whose music ranges from choral and vocal-instrumental to orchestral and stage works. In this interview, she gives us an insight into her work.
Only in the last few years has Marianna von Martines (1744–1812) finally begun to win the recognition she deserves as an important composer of the eighteenth century. Martines’s synthesis and mastery of both old and new styles is a central theme in her works, and scholars studying her music have pointed it out frequently. It is especially evident in her sacred choral-orchestral works, one of the earliest being the Seconda Messa of 1760.
Georg Frideric Handel is the creator of the English oratorio. When he first staged his Esther as a religious drama without scenic action at the King’s Theatre in London in 1732, it marked the beginning of an unparalleled success story. Opera audiences were so enthusiastic about the new genre that from that time onwards Handel, who was not only a composer but also a theater manager, filled his opera houses with oratorios based on biblical themes. Performances of the Messiah and later of other oratorios too for charitable purposes were one of the central driving forces behind the development of the great music festivals that were held from the early eighteenth century onwards.
I find inspiration in the very concept that humans can create music.
If I only can pick one I do believe I need to pick when I first heard Claude Debussy’s Trois nocturnes for the first time. It was such an eye opener for me. I had never heard music composed in that way before.
