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Berlin, June 2015 – Avi Avital

So, how much do you know about the mandolin? If you are anything like me, not much. But a day with the Israeli mandolin soloist, Avi Avital, changed all that for me!

I wanted to make it a real Berlin-Day, so we started at the Brandenburg Gate. Avi was a dream to film with, he got his mandolin out wherever I asked him to and would strum away and charm the tourists and the Berliners while I talked into the camera. He made everyone smile around him – with the exception of one grumpy policeman who wanted to have us all arrested…we weren’t exactly sure why.

Being Sarah-naded by Avi with ‘Life is Beautiful’ in the rickshaw was one of my highlights of Sarah’s Music so far and our Plucked Instruments Picnic was so much fun. The Berliners in Monbijou Park didn’t pay much attention to Vivaldi but all heads turned and phones came out when Avi started playing the famous mandolin solo from REM’s ‘Losing my Religion’. Check out the outtakes for more REM and Sarah-nading!

We spent the evening at the Berlin Festival – a big techno music event at the Treptow Arena. Definitely not your usual classical music event but Avi was performing for the Yellow Lounge, a series of concerts which promote classical music in unusual venues.

This venue was definitely not your usual classical music venue what with the throbbing of the techo beats and the enthusiasm of the party-goers. People were intrigued when they saw us outside with the mandolin and the cameras and said they would come to come to Avi’s concert later on that night, even though noone we talked to said they listened to classical music normally. But that’s the whole point of the Yellow Lounge.

Avi’s two concert sets were great. I didn’t envy him up there – the first one started after 11pm, the place was smoky and dark and by then the techno-fans were pretty ‘happy’. We had ravers dancing to Vivaldi and saying how cool it all was. Basically you could behave how you liked during the concert but I had the feeling people were really listening and enjoying the music. It helped of course that Avi is gorgeous and has such a good stage presence!

I can’t imagine a better ambassador for the mandolin than Avi. I love what he is doing in bringing the mandolin into the concert halls as a solo instrument and performing with such a passion – he now has fans all over the world. If you can get to see him live, do go to a concert and make sure you smile for one of his now famous ‘View From the Stage’ photos afterwards.

Thanks, Avi, for a great day in Berlin with you and your mandolin. I am now officially a mandolin – and Avi – fan!

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Leipzig is only an hour away from Berlin but, as I don’t know the city very well at all, I was excited to go there and ‘meet’ Leipzig’s biggest tourist attraction – Johann Sebastian Bach. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the first thing I saw getting off the train was a big poster of Bach announcing this year’s Bach Festival! (See the Making Of photos..)

The best part of the day was entering the Sakristei of the Nicolai church and seeing the famous Bach portrait for the first time. It has only very recently come back to Leipzig after 265 years away from the city. Although there was a big security team in the room, we were allowed right up close to the portrait – my team and I felt very honoured – and I can report that the painting seems alive, as if Bach is looking directly at you. Another honour was to have THE Bach expert to talk us through the history of the portrait – Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

I could have listened to Sir John all day. It was very touching hearing him talk about the painting, and he was obviously moved at seeing it on public display again after all this time. An incredible story and a wonderful present for the city of Leipzig.

Other Bach highlights of the day included meeting the nice ‘Bach by Bike’ bikers from France, visiting the Bach Archive (there is so much cool stuff in there!) and talking to Friedrich Praetorius from the St Thomas Boys Choir. I loved the fact that when I asked him what piece he would recommend to someone who had never heard Bach, he picked the St Matthew Passion, one of my all time favourites too. What is YOUR favourite piece by Bach? Do let me know below!

Bach really came “bach” to his roots today and I was happy and proud that Sarah’s Music could be part of it! Thanks to Simone Dollmann of PS music for all her help and I hope you enjoy this episode!

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After the Sarah´s Music episode with the MRI experiment, I was excited to combine music and science again – so I went to visit Dr Eckart Altenmüller in Hannover. Dr Altenmüller is one of the top specialists in the world on how the brain perceives and performs music and does incredible work there.

Personally, I am a player who has always concentrated on sound and expression rather than thinking too deeply about the brain science behind my playing so I was curious what I would learn.

I could have talked to Dr Altenmüller all day about goosebumps and musical brain development but was gently reminded by my team that I had volunteered to be a scientific guinea pig again. We went downstairs to Dr Altenmüller´s lab where his assistant Christos Ioannou was waiting for us with a rather attractive white brain cap. It was all great fun… until they started hooking me up to the computer and squirting stuff into my hair. See the Making Of photos and the outtakes and you’ll understand what I mean… And when the brain cap was removed: OUCH!

It was all worth it. It was totally captivating to see exactly what brain activity was going on when I played my horn. It was particularly exciting to watch my brain ‘playing’ Mozart – we could literally see the waves of rhythm happening on the screen in front of us.

It was fascinating to talk to Dr Altenmüller – his great passion for his beloved music is very evident – and he had a wonderful way of making even the most technical jargon easy to understand.

The best thing to take away from this episode is the scientific evidence that music really IS good for your brain. If children learn music at an early age, they develop better and for older people, music can help with dementia and stroke patients. I have always been a strong advocate of

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The Sarah´s Music team turned up bright and early on a Sunday morning at the Berlin Philharmonie and, after filming my introduction in the empty hall, the doors opened and we were nearly trampled by 1300 excited amateur singers streaming in clutching their Verdi scores and trying to find their seats! Welcome to ‘Singing Is For Everyone’!

The atmosphere was wonderful, and I heard many different languages being spoken.  People from all over the world buy tickets for this opportunity to perform with a professional choir and orchestra. ‘Mitsingkonzert’ is translated literally as ‘Singing With concert’. But this concert was more than a sing-along – the singers all take it very seriously indeed and knew the Verdi Requiem backwards. I had decided to sing too so that I could give Sarah’s Music viewers authentic feedback. Thank goodness I had played it as a musician many times before but this was the first time for me to sing the piece.  I sat down amongst the sopranos and as my neighbour proudly told me she had learned the Latin text with the help of an online website, I silently thanked my school music teacher, Mr Simpson, for insisting in class that we learn how to pronounce the Latin text. ‘You never know when you will need it’, he had said all those years ago…

I started to get nervous.  There is a good reason why I became a horn player and not a singer! Nonetheless, it was very exciting to be part of this huge choir singing the Verdi Requiem – and I assumed that noone would be able to hear me anyway, not as one of 1300 voices.  How wrong I was!

Simon Halsey came in and you could tell immediately by the applause and ripples of anticipation how loved he is. He did some singing warm-ups with us then took us straight into the first movement which involves a lot of quiet singing. I found this really difficult – and do admit to miming some of the high notes  – but loved singing the loud Dies Irae with all my heart! Because everyone was using the same edition of the score (no photocopies were allowed), of course every turned the page at the same time. Sometimes the sound of 1300 people turning a page was louder than the music itself. It made me smile every time.

It was incredible to be part of this huge body of people, all using one of the most primitive instruments known to man – the human voice. During the breaks in rehearsal, I talked with the singers about their passion for music and how they include singing in their daily lives. I was very moved by their stories and had tears in my eyes at various times during the concert.

The Rundfunkchor Berlin – the pros – were stunning as usual and it was great to get some insider information about life in a professional choir from Isabelle, Judit, Holger and Axel. What a fun interview that was – see the Outtakes for more! Thanks also to Sabine Germann for all the help and wonderful organizing and to Matthias Heyde for some of these making-of photos.

And, last but not at all least, thanks to Simon Halsey. He is simply a gift to the music world – so brilliant and so inspiring. That day with him and the choir was about true music-making and I loved it. I´m signing up for next year, who wants to come and join me?

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I´ve been a fan of Martin´s for a long time and really wanted to include him in an episode of Sarah´s Music. But he is one of the busiest people I know! So when I asked him if we could feature him, he offered me a deal, ‘Ok but only if you play with us during the interval of the Eurovision Song Contest’! I didn’t need much persuading.. Martin´s ensemble, the Percussive Planet, are fantastic and he often includes brass. The only problem for me was that Martin insisted I play on a Vienna Horn, which is quite different to play than my own horn. But when in Vienna, do as the Viennese do…so I borrowed a Vienna Horn from my colleague Wolfgang Vladar, 3rd horn of the Vienna Philharmonic, and off to Vienna I went.

The first rehearsal went all day – we were playing live in the hall but to a playback track which the group had recorded the week before in an all night recording session. We´d all learned the piece by heart and had a click track in our ears to keep us in time. I was chosen to be one of the two “horn-players-on-the-steps” so was sent to the back of the hall for the beginning of the rehearsal. The Vienna Stadthalle is huge (seats 16,000 people) and we had approximately 1 minute to run…and I mean really run!….from our stairs at the back of the hall to the stage to be ready for our next entrance. We did a lot of running during that first rehearsal…

Two weeks later we were back and the entire show was rehearsed three times over two before the live event. I was so impressed and fascinated by the people behind the scenes making every little detail work with perfect timing. The stagehands had 5 mins 30 seconds to get 2 truckloads of instruments on stage and in place, they had been practicing it every day for 2 weeks and had green lasers from the ceiling showing them the positions. It was incredible and worked every time. Kudos to the whole Eurovision Song Contest team!

On the night, we had a several hours of waiting backstage for our 9 minute performance live to 200, 000 people – but we had a lot of fun. See what went on in the wonderful photos from Katharina Ziedeck ( 32-45 in the Gallery) and in the outtakes. Martin´s parents, Sieglinde and Martin ‘The Chief’ Senior were in charge of the organization and did a fabulous job. Brand Martin Grubinger is a real family business!

I used to watch the Eurovision Song Contest when I was a teenager in the UK and loved it. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but to be part of it was really mind-blowing. The organisation, the venue, the perfection, the people – I absolutely adored being part of it. Martin and his Percussive Planet ROCK!

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This programme is a special feature about a great fund raising event for the German Aids Foundation which was sponsored by the Deutsche Welle. Eleven international opera singers performed with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the Choir of the Bonn Theater. It was a great evening and a lot of money was raised. There is nothing better than a good rousing opera aria to get the emotions going (and hopefully open the purses…)

You can still take this special Sarah´s Music Horn Challenge and donate to this good cause! All details are here on the website: www.operagala.org

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“The Greatest Trumpet Player in the Galaxy“ is how Håkan has been described by the press. He certainly had a stellar week in Berlin—it was his debut concert with the Berlin Phil, aged 53!

I have admired Håkan forever and had a wonderful week with him in Berlin.

Wonderful but packed: we rehearsed with the orchestra, filmed for this programme and did a live Horn Hangout which was watched by Håkan´s fans all over the world.

We are lucky to have a musician like him and I was very happy to feature him on Sarah´s Music. And am already planning my revenge for the Horn Challenge…

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Who would volunteer to spend two hours in a very confined space on their back wearing a Stormtrooper mask and blowing through a plastic mouthpiece and tube into a copper-based horn which was attached to their feet?? Well, me. The things I do for my art!  Actually, it was totally worth it…

This episode was both scary and fascinating for me. Fascinating (and also a bit creepy!) to see what was going on in my mouth and chest when I play the horn. Scary being in the tube at the beginning – I got used to it after a while but it isn’t the most pleasant place to be. It’s wonderful to think that these videos might be able to help teachers or people with playing problems such as focal dystonia. It was also great to meet Erwin Schoonderwaldt and see his amazing motion capture research on violinists.

Thanks so much to the wonderful team at the Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Lab at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen (that really was a mouthful to say on camera…): Dr Peter Iltis (who came all the way over from the USA for these tests) and Dr Jens Frahm and his team. Enjoy the whole interview with Peter here and check out the outtake to see how to get the spit out of the MRI horn!!

I am also especially proud to be able to offer this exclusive video of more of my MRI horn exercises in the hope that they may be useful information for the horn world. This is such a wonderful project!

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I was so excited about this episode! Who wouldn’t be? To be able to spend a day exploring backstage at the Met, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, meet opera superstars and listen in on a rehearsal. I loved being there!

There is something very special about sitting in an empty opera house listening to a rehearsal. It was like they were playing just for me and my team. The orchestra was rehearsing Massenet´s “Manon” with Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo in the main roles. I had never met them before and loved talking to them both (adored Diana´s dress) It was fun to be down in the pit with the horn section – and what a horn section they are! Thanks for talking to me, you guys!

Peter Gelb, the managing director, gave a really interesting interview- it´s a real problem with this programme: Sarah´s Music is only 12 minutes but we film hours of fantastic footage for every episode.

I don’t envy the editors, who have to choose what things to leave out but if I was editing, the programs would be 2 hours long. Good thing I´m not! Enjoy being at the Met in this episode, I really did!

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Just across the road from Carnegie Hall you can find the 21C Media Group.

I met Jessica Lustig, one of the managing partners, in Sydney whilst involved in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project in 2011.

She was responsible for thrusting a microphone in my hand and telling me I was presenting live during the concert—and there has been no looking back ever since, she´s created a monster 🙂

Since then I have really admired the work 21C does for my beloved classical music world and decided we should show the Sarah´s Music viewers what they do and why it is so important for music today.

In this episode you will meet Jessica, Albert Imperato, Glenn Petry and the rest of the 21C team – a fantastic group of people passionate about music and the job they do.

Later, Alan Gilbert, the chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic and one of 21C´s clients, popped in. He officially had a meeting at 21C, but I think he was just determined to get in on the Horn Challenge – check it out!