Community
Over the past fifteen years, the Concerto21 Summer Academy has established a large network of lecturers and almost two hundred former participants. Today, these include directors of concert halls, festivals and ensembles, agency managers, label managers, graphic designers, psychologists, and many more. Thanks to the Concerto21 Foundation, we can now enrich our network with important players from outside the cultural sector.
Concerto21 Academy
Concerto21 participants can get to know key figures and influential players in the music business - both in seminars and workshops and in the evening informal discussions. The speakers include university professors, directors of concert halls, festivals and ensembles, agency managers, label managers, web and graphic designers, psychologists and musicians. Concerto21 offers an inspiring alternation of classical seminar formats, workshops in small groups and individual coaching, so that all academics are individually challenged and supported.
Team
Andreas Brandis
Andreas Brandis is a German music manager. He is managing partner of the Munich / Berlin based Jazz & Beyond label ACT Music + Vision and founder and CEO of the Berlin based management, consulting and artist agency Tambour Music Management. Andreas Brandis was born in Heidelberg in 1980 into a family with a strong connection to classical music. As a child and teenager, he took lessons in violin and percussion. Later he studied jazz percussion and music pedagogy at the conservatories in Leipzig and Lucerne and worked for more than 10 years as a musician and composer in various national and international ensembles as well as at several German theaters.
Andreas Brandis
Akademie Director
Sonia Simmenauer
Sonia Simmenauer was born in the USA and grew up in France. After studying languages (English-German) at the Sorbonne in Paris, she moved to Hamburg in 1982, where she founded her concert agency, Impresariat Simmenauer, in 1989. In 2008, she opened Café Leonar, along with the Jewish Salon at Grindel. In the same year, her book "Muss Es Sein" about life in a string quartet, was published by Berenberg. (Meanwhile translated into French and English). In 2009 she moved to Berlin with the agency, in 2022 she founded a Berlin Jewish salon.
Sonia Simmenauer
Founder Impresariat Simmenauer, President BDKV, Manager, Mentor
Uta Gielke
Uta Gielke took over as head of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation's culture program department in 2005 and has been deputy head of the foundation's entire program department since 2020. She has been a member of the Board of the Carl Toepfer Foundation since 2016. She studied Applied Cultural Studies at the University of Lüneburg and is also trained as a speech therapist. She has provided organizational and conceptual support for the Concerto21 Academy since its launch in 2008 and has accompanied some of the academy members on their musical journey for many years. In addition to music, she is passionate about the visual arts. Since 2020, she has therefore also been in charge of further education formats for visual artists and prospective museum directors.
Uta Gielke
Program Director Culture, Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S.
Martin Tröndle
Martin Tröndle has held the WÜRTH Chair of Cultural Production since 2015, which was established as an endowed chair with the help of the WÜRTH Foundation and the Stifterverband der Deutschen Wissenschaft. The chair's research and teaching focuses on cultural organizations and their visitors and non-visitors, cultural policies and cultural funding, and the impact of specific performance and exhibition formats. Since 2018, Tröndle has directed ECR - Experimental Concert Research (experimental-concert-research.org). The research project investigates the concert experience and is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Tröndle conceived and co-directed Concerto21 from 2008 to 2020. From 2021, he will act as spiritus rector in the background. On behalf of the Alfred Töpfer Foundation, he has been able to conduct Concerto21 - Concerts for the Present annually since 2008.
Martin Tröndle
Founder of the Academy
Mentors
Tina Sikorski
Tina Sikorski is Managing Director of the Initiative Musik, the central institution of the federal government and the music industry for the promotion of the German music industry. On behalf of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Initiative Musik supports numerous artistic and infrastructure projects and also awards industry prizes. Before joining the Initiative Musik, the business administration graduate worked for many years at the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim, where she most recently headed the Institute for Music and Creative Industry Practice, which was founded on her initiative.
Tina Sikorski
Managing Director Initiative Musik
Marc Wilhelm
Marc Wilhelm works as a creative consultant and visual storyteller with a focus on conception and content strategy. For more than ten years he has focused on the production of videos and photos for artists, bands and brands. As a videographer and photographer he travels worldwide with different artists and develops ideas and concepts for big and small brands from his studio in Freiburg. He puts strategies into action and inspires creative people with new ideas and impulses. At Concerto21. Marc Wilhelm teaches the subject "Digital World: Content & Creation" and imparts not only practical expertise, but also possibilities and tools for idea generation. In close cooperation with the participants, he gives impulses and analyzes existing content.
Marc Wilhelm
Founder Fuchsrot, Creative Consultant
Folkert Uhde
Folkert Uhde has developed the term concert design for his artistic work and established it as a theory in the discourse on new concert formats of classical music. He is the artistic director of the Köthener Bachfesttage and, together with Hans-Joachim Gögl, the inventor and artistic director of the Montforter Zwischentöne in Feldkirch/Vorarlberg. Uhde teaches at various colleges and universities and advises institutions on artistic and strategic issues for the future. As artistic director of the international research project Experimental Concert Research, he and an interdisciplinary team investigate the concert experience from the perspective of the audience. In 2009, he was named "Cultural Manager of the Year" for his innovative approach in connection with Berlin's Radialsystem. Together with Jochen Sandig, he is the founder of the Radialsystem and still a partner today.
Folkert Uhde
Founder Konzertdesign, Artistic Director Bachfest Köthen, Monforter Zwischentöne
Annekatrin Hentschel
Annekatrin Hentschel has dedicated herself to presenting classical music in an emotional, accessible and humorous way. Not only as a presenter of concerts, events and festivals such as the ARD International Music Competition, Opera for All or the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. For the past 10 years, she has headed the young magazine SWEET SPOT at BR-Klassik - after radio, TV and events, the focus of her young team is now primarily on the development of digital formats. Podcasts and music video productions for the ARD Mediathek and Audiothek are among the current projects with a musical focus on film and game music and contemporary chamber music.
Annekatrin Hentschel
Presenter and editor Bayerischer Rundfunk / BR Klassik
Florian Willeitner
Florian Willeitner, born in Passau in 1991, is a multi-award-winning German violinist, composer and arranger whose work focuses on combining a wide variety of musical cultures, from classical to jazz to worldwide folk music. In 2019, he founded the production company Pool of Invention with his long-time musical collaborator Ivan Turkalj, of which he has been artistic director ever since. He has created works for renowned orchestras, festivals and soloists, including the Tonkünstlerorchester Niederösterreich, Musikfest Stuttgart, Benjamin Schmid, Andreas Hofmeir or Rolando Villazon and the Salzburg Mozartwoche. His music is performed in renowned venues and festivals worldwide. He is a founding member of the New Piano Trio, with which he won the Bavarian Arts Promotion Award in 2022, and since November 2021 he has been first violinist of the renowned vision string quartet. At the International Zbigniew Seifert Competition 2016 he earned the 2nd prize. In 2017, he completed his master's studies with Benjamin Schmid at the Mozarteum University with top grades. For the EU Summit of the 28 European heads of government in September 2018, he created the work Mozart in the Shape of Europe. He composed the contemporary compulsory piece for violin solo for the Inter- national Mozart Competition 2020. He lives in Berlin and is the exclusive recording artist for ACT Music since 2021.
Florian Willeitner
1. violinist Vision String Quartet, Founder Pool Of Inventions
Michael Gottfried
For almost 20 years Michael Gottfried has been taking care of communication, press, text & concept, digital marketing and A&R in the field of jazz & more, with regular excursions into crossover, indie, classical and much of what is commonly understood as "world music". Since 2009 he has been doing this exclusively for the ACT label, one of the world's leading indies of contemporary, cross-genre music with jazz DNA. Michael Gottfried has worked on more than 500 albums for ACT, with artists such as Nils Landgren, Michael Wollny, Esbjörn Svensson, Wolfgang Haffner, Lars Danielsson, Youn Sun Nah, Vijay Iyer, Iiro Rantala, Bugge Wesseltoft, Viktoria Tolstoy, Emile Parisien, Vincent Peirani and many more. At the same time, his heart beats especially for the establishment of artists of a new generation, such as Johanna Summer, Joel Lyssarides, Anna Gréta, Jazzrausch Bigband, Jakob Manz, Vincent Meissner and many more. Michael Gottfried was born in 1980 in Suhl / Thuringia and currently lives with his wife, dog and drums in Munich.
Michael Gottfried
Communication Manager, A&R ACT Music
Ohad Ben-Ari
Israeli-born pianist and composer Ohad Ben-Ari is the artistic director of the cross-disciplinary ID Festival, which he launched in 2015 with the generous support of the German Bundestag. Trained as a classical musician, Ohad's career has taken surprising turns that have led to diverse collaborations, from Kanye West to Sir Simon Rattle. Today, Ohad Ben-Ari lives with his family in Berlin, where he works as a pianist and composer in addition to being a festival director. His compositions and arrangements are performed around the globe.
Ohad Ben-Ari
Bettina Bohle
Dr. Bettina Bohle currently heads the project "House of Jazz - Center for Jazz and Improvised Music", which aims to implement a place for production, presentation, mediation, networking and discourse in Berlin. For several years, she ran the jazz blog JAZZAffine. Since 2013, she has been active first on the board and later as managing director at the interest group IG Jazz Berlin. In the course of this, she helped to develop, among other things, the Jazzwoche Berlin, the Jazzpreis Berlin, and a special support program for women in jazz. Since 2020, she has been with the Bundesverband Deutsche Jazzunion, where she initially oversaw the Gender & Diversity department before taking over as head of the Jazz Center project team. She supported the Initiative Musik in setting up the German Jazz Award and the first implementation of the award. Since 2020, she has been one of the three spokespersons for the Bundeskonferenz Jazz.
Bettina Bohle
Head of „House of Jazz – Center for Jazz and Improvised Music“, Spokesperson Bundeskonferenz Jazz
Konstantin Udert
Konstantin Udert became managing director of the junge norddeutsche philharmonie (jnp), which strengthens progressive approaches in orchestral and classical tradition and is considered a meeting point for the young classical music scene from all over Germany, out of his studies in trombone and political science. In this capacity, he co-initiated the Detect Classic Festival at the intersection of classical, electronic and experimental music. Today, the festival continues to be accompanied by Udert and implemented by Detect Sounds gUG in cooperation with the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Detect Classic Festival aims to create openness, curiosity and encounters between the genres represented and their milieus.
Konstantin Udert
Founder Detect Classic Festival
Roman Sladek
Roman Sladek studied classical and jazz trombone as well as culture and music management at the HfMT Munich. Since then he has worked in the Munich music scene with his own bands as well as accompanying musicians, teaching and working as a music manager and promoter. In March 2014 he founded the Jazzrausch Bigband with musicians from the HfMT Munich, with whom he has produced and presented nine albums so far (2021), after The Mirror Suite with Christian Elsässer, Matthias Schriefl and Moritz Stahl for example the Christmas program Still! Still! Still! or the album téchne. The large formation led by Sladek has performed at New York's Lincoln Center and at international festivals, among other venues. In 2017, Sladek received the BMW Welt Young Artist Jazz Award with his Jazzrausch Bigband. In his septet Slatec, he works with several soloists on creative trap and techno in real time. Since 2022 he is also Artistic Director of the Bergson Kunstkraftwerk in Munich, which is expected to open in early 2024.
Roman Sladek
Founder Jazzrausch Bigband, Artistic Director Bergson Kulturkraftwerk
Sebastian Rohde & Annika Line Trost
Firma Freimauer is a Berlin based graphic studio specialized in art direction for music & media and its visual resonation, creative concepts & strategies, extraordinaire typography, logo design & branding, fine art illustrations & paintings, urban culture, cosmopolitan attitudes & rock'n'roll.
Sebastian Rohde & Annika Line Trost
Firma Freimauer
Concerto21 Foundation
Board of Trustees
Sonia Simmenauer
Sonia Simmenauer was born in the USA and grew up in France. After studying languages (English-German) at the Sorbonne in Paris, she moved to Hamburg in 1982, where she founded her concert agency, Impresariat Simmenauer, in 1989. In 2008, she opened Café Leonar, along with the Jewish Salon at Grindel. In the same year, her book "Muss Es Sein" about life in a string quartet, was published by Berenberg. (Meanwhile translated into French and English). In 2009 she moved to Berlin with the agency, in 2022 she founded a Berlin Jewish salon.
Sonia Simmenauer
Founder Impresariat Simmenauer, President BDKV, Manager, Mentor
Julia Hülsmann
Julia Hülsmann is a unique voice in the European jazz scene. She has an exceptional output as a bandleader, pianist and composer. She has lived in Berlin since 1991, where she studied jazz piano at the HdK. She has been active nationally and internationally as a pianist and composer for many years, releasing numerous CDs, always with her trio and various vocal and instrumental guests. The range of her projects includes a solo program to octet and collaboration with big bands (e.g. NDR and HR big bands), of which her trio is the longest standing ensemble - she has been playing with Marc Muellbauer and Heinrich Köbberling for almost 20 years. From 2011-13 she was president of the Union of German Jazz Musicians (Deutsche Jazzunion). In 2014 she was Improvisor in Residence at the Moers Festival, and in 2016 she received the SWR Jazz Prize as well as the WDR Honorary Prize for her political work to improve working conditions for jazz musicians*. In 2019 she was artist in residence at the Elbjazz Festival. In 2020, the Julia Hülsmann Trio was awarded the Trier Jazz Prize. 2021 the pianist and her quartet received the German Jazz Award for the best national instrumental album. In 2022 she received the GEMA Music Authors Award in the category Jazz/Cross Over. 2022 saw the release of the new Julia Hülsmann Quartet album The Next Door, the 8th release on ECM. Julia Hülsmann is professor of piano jazz/pop and ensemble conducting at the Berlin University of the Arts. She is the subject coordinator of the jazz/pop section of the music teacher training programs.
Julia Hülsmann
Jazz pianist
Annekatrin Hentschel
Annekatrin Hentschel has dedicated herself to presenting classical music in an emotional, accessible and humorous way. Not only as a presenter of concerts, events and festivals such as the ARD International Music Competition, Opera Für Alle or the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis. For the past 10 years, she has headed the young magazine SWEET SPOT at BR-Klassik - after radio, TV and events, the focus of her young team is now primarily on the development of digital formats. Podcasts and music video productions for the ARD Mediathek and Audiothek are among the current projects with a musical focus on film and game music and contemporary chamber music.
Annekatrin Hentschel
Presenter and editor Bayerischer Rundfunk / BR Klassik
Uta Gielke
Uta Gielke took over as head of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation's culture program department in 2005 and has been deputy head of the foundation's entire program department since 2020. She has been a member of the Board of the Carl Toepfer Foundation since 2016. She studied Applied Cultural Studies at the University of Lüneburg and is also trained as a speech therapist. She has provided organizational and conceptual support for the Concerto21 Academy since its launch in 2008 and has accompanied some of the academy members on their musical journey for many years. In addition to music, she is passionate about the visual arts. Since 2020, she has therefore also been in charge of further education formats for visual artists and prospective museum directors.
Uta Gielke
Program director of culture, Alfred Toepfer Toepfer Foundation F.V.S.
Foundation Board
Andreas Brandis
Andreas Brandis is a German music manager. He is managing partner of the Munich / Berlin based Jazz & Beyond label ACT Music + Vision and founder and CEO of the Berlin based management, consulting and artist agency Tambour Music Management. Andreas Brandis was born in Heidelberg in 1980 into a family with a strong connection to classical music. As a child and teenager, he took lessons in violin and percussion. Later he studied jazz percussion and music pedagogy at the conservatories in Leipzig and Lucerne and worked for more than 10 years as a musician and composer in various national and international ensembles as well as at several German theaters.
Andreas Brandis
Managing Director ACT Music & The ACT Agency
Dr. Krischan von Moeller
Krischan von Moeller is a founding partner of Paragon. Previously, he was responsible for the restructuring of a portfolio of medium-sized companies at BZV Partners. From 1999 to 2002, he was Head of Corporate Development at the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, where he was responsible for strategic and operational projects of the group as well as M&A transactions. Prior to that, Krischan spent six years with the Boston Consulting Group in Munich, London and Australasia. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the Technical University of Darmstadt and Harvard University. In his free time, Krischan enjoys spending time with his family and traveling.
Dr. Krischan von Moeller
Founding Partner Paragon Partners
Ansgar Wimmer
Ansgar Wimmer has been a member of the Board of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S. since October 2004, and has been its Chairman since July 1, 2005. From 2000 to 2004, he was a member of the City Council of Gütersloh (without party affiliation), responsible for culture, education, youth, social affairs and sports in the city of Gütersloh. Previous Wimmer gained work experience as a project manager at the nonprofit Bertelsmann Stiftung, at the United Nations (UNCTAD/ Geneva) and at the consulting firm consulting firm McKinsey & Co. He is a fully qualified lawyer and, as a John J. McCloy Scholar, he holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University/USA). Ansgar Wimmer is Honorary Vice Chairman of the Association of German Foundations. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Kunststiftung NRW, the E.W. Kuhlmann Foundation, the non-profit initiative Common Purpose Deutschland GmbH, on the Board of Trustees of the Hamburger Öffentliche Bücherhallen and the Ernst H. Klett Stiftung Merkur, Stuttgart, and on the board of the Lieselotte Klein Foundation, Hamburg/Berlin, and member of the board of trustees of the Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg.
Ansgar Wimmer
Chairman of the Board of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S.
Former Participants
Concerto21. was launched in 2008 by the Toepfer Foundation and has since developed into a highly effective and sustainable continuing education format. Following the Summer Academy, many of the participants have completely revised their concerts and their media presence, dissolved existing ensembles and formed new ones, turned to their art in a new way - or they have taken completely unforeseen paths. Risks and side effects are expressly welcome at Concerto21.
- Academy 2024
- Academy 2023
- Academy 2022
- Academy 2019
- Academy 2018
- Academy 2017
- Academy 2016
- Academy 2014
- Academy 2013
- Academy 2012
- Academy 2011
- Academy 2010
- Academy 2008
