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 ESME Singers and Rheinland-Pfalz International Choir Perform Together Again

By Emily Burnell Petrou

In what we hope will become an annual event, the ESME Singers and the Rheinland-Pfalz International Choir performed together in their second joint concert on Saturday, May 11, 2024 in the light-filled Lutherkirche in Kaiserslautern. Last April, the RPIC came to Munich, and this year we returned the favor; our entire choir was not able to participate, but 22 of us managed to make it up north for the adventure. The RPIC is led by ESME’s former longtime choir conductor, Eric Weddle, and he, along with their highly efficient choral manager and soprano Gosia Schulze, and ESME’s own organizer extraordinaire and alto Annie Janssen, have worked hard to make these concerts happen. Thank you, Eric, Gosia and Annie!

The concert opened at 18:30 on the dot with both choirs enthusiastically taking on Rossini’s popular opera chorus, “Il Carnevale di Venezia”, setting the mood for a cheerful evening of choral entertainment. The audience was delighted and ready for more!

Then it was time for ESME to take the stage on their own, led by our multi-tasking pianist Léa Vernisse taking on the conducting role (as well as accompaniment on several concert pieces). Our set featured three a cappella selections recently performed in our Spring Showcase: Monteverdi’s crisp “Cantate Domino”, Billy Joel’s soulful “And So It Goes”, and a rousing traditional spiritual, “I Can Tell the World.” This was then followed by the Rheinland-Pfalz International Choir presenting the lilting and precise “Se Ben Vedi O Vita Mia” by Giovanni Gastoldi, another lovely “Cantate Domino” (this time by Karl Jenkins), Frank Ticheli’s ethereal “Earth Song”, a talented ensemble (including Eric Weddle) performing an Eagles song, “Seven Bridges Road”, and finally, perfect for the gorgeous spring weather outside, the whole RPIC choir was back to thrill us with Beatles classic “Here Comes the Sun”.

Another ensemble of two trios then formed a sextet of “wise women”; one from ESME (who also performed this in our recent Spring Showcase) and the other from RPIC, bewitching the audience with the mysterious tale of “The Magpie”. Following that, the two choirs gathered together once again for more joint pieces under Eric Weddle’s steady hand: the rollicking sea shanty “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor”, the well known spiritual “Elijah Rock”, and finally, the grand finale: a stirring version of the beloved Simon and Garfunkel hit, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. An encore capped off the evening with a personal favorite of both choirs, the lively South African “second national anthem”, “Tshotsholoza”, always a crowd pleaser (and mighty fun to sing as well!). 

The two choirs then happily headed out to dinner to celebrate another successful concert, mixing and mingling at the tables, making new friends, and – of course – serenading the restaurant with a spirited reprise of “Tshotsholoza” (a long-standing after-party tradition).

Plans are already underway for a joint weekend away next Spring in our usual venue at the Humboldt-Institut in Bad Schüssenried. This will give us all a chance to have more rehearsal time with both conductors together, something we have yet to experience with our joint concerts, as Eric was unable to attend last year’s, and the same went for ESME’s conductor Linda Oppermann this time around. Watch this space for more information on our two choirs collaborating together to make a joyful noise!

And don’t forget to keep your eyes out for our “Hot Hot Hot” summer concert, with all three ESME ensembles (Orchestra, Singers, and Resident Alien Big Band) at 6 PM on Saturday, July 13, 2024 at the Trudering Kulturzentrum.

Tickets are already available, so book now at https://esme-ev.de/tickets/

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By Emily Burnell Petrou

On a lovely autumn Saturday in mid-October, our generous orchestra conductor, Orhan Ahıskal, once again offered ESME members a chance to take one of his “Hit the Road” guided tours in the musically historic city of Salzburg, and easy day trip for Münchners. 

We all met at the Munich Hauptbahnhof to board the 9:55 train and managed to find seats close to each other for socializing on the trip down. Once in Salzburg, we strolled in the mild sunshine to the bustling Altstadt, stopping first at a bakery to pick up snacks to fuel our energy for the next three hours. The tour officially began at Mozartplatz, and we continued on to various sites such as the birthplace of the tragic Expressionist poet Georg Trakl, who worked closely with composer Anton Webern, a quick peek into the Cafe Tomaselli (Mozart’s favorite coffee house – we also learned about the history of coffee coming to Vienna!), the magnificent baroque Franciscan Church, with its significant connection to Josef Haydn’s lesser known composer brother Michael (both contemporaries and friends of Salzburg’s favorite son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), the beautiful St. Peter’s cemetery, which includes the catacombs and grave containing both Michael Haydn and Mozart’s older sister, fellow musical child prodigy Marianne, and of course Mozart’s famous birthplace, which is also a museum dedicated to this genius of a composer. The tour ended with us listening to the cast of the beloved 1965 film “The Sound of Music” singing “Do-Re-Mi”, while we wandered around the scenic Mirabell Garden, one of the many famous Salzburg locales where filming took place. Throughout the entire tour, Orhan played us important musical pieces to highlight the many stories, which added to the richness of the history we were drinking in together; a truly profound and moving way to experience the lore we learned!

Afterwards, a jolly group of us joined Orhan for hot drinks at the elegant café housed in the Mozart family’s residence. A very fun and informative day all around, and we relished both the educational journey and the enjoyable companionship (and we just may have recruited a new soprano for our choir in the process, a singing pupil of Orhan’s talented wife – fingers crossed!). We feel very fortunate to have Orhan as part of the ESME family, to share his heartfelt passion and enthusiasm for music and the arts. Thanks again, Orhan, for taking the time out of your busy schedule for this!

Orhan is planning on conducting another one of these Salzburg tours on Sunday, November 16, so please mark your calendars and contact him if you are interested. It is well worth your time if you are a lover of cultural history.

In the meantime, our three ensembles – the ESME Orchestra and Singers, and the Resident Alien Band – continue to rehearse weekly to prepare for our upcoming ESME winter concert, “A Very Wicked Christmas”, which will take place on the evening of Saturday, December 13, at the stunning Munich Künstlerhaus am Lenbachplatz. Bookmark this space for further details, or better yet, subscribe to this blog!

(Speaking of marking your calendars, our Resident Alien Big Band will be putting on their very first Big Band Karaoke event on Friday, October 17, with doors opening at 7 pm at the Kultur Neue Ziegelei in Bogenhausen. This is bound to be an absolute blast and your chance to feel like a star, so show up early and choose your song from their playlist. Or just come along to watch and enjoy the spectacle!)

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By Emily Burnell Petrou

Once in a while, ESME members get a chance to participate in exciting choral events outside of our organization and even outside of Munich or Germany. Recently, a group of ten of our ESME Singers participated – for the second time for many of them – in composer/conductor Eric Whitacre’s spectacular Sing Along Concert in Barcelona’s stunning Palau de la Música Catalana. Two days of intense and fun-filled rehearsals took place with hundreds of participants from around the world, with a concert culminating on the evening of Saturday, 13 September. Like ESME, the repertoire was varied in genres, from some of Whitacre’s most beloved pieces (“The Seal Lullaby”, “Sing Gently”, “Cloudburst” and selections from his composition “The Sacred Veil”), as well as a few rousing Moses Hogan gospel classics (“Elijah Rock”, “The Battle of Jericho” and “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me”). Both the audience and the singers were moved to tears by both “the Sacred Veil” and Bach’s “Come Sweet Death”, both dealing with grief and loss. There was the added delight of singing along with some of the singers we shared our very first joint ESME Weekend Away with this past April, from former ESME Singers conductor Eric Weddle’s Rheinland-Pfalz International Choir. Our first experience in this beautiful venue with Whitacre was in September of 2023 – also with about ten ESME Singers in all – and there were hints that in two year’s time, there will be a repeat event, possibly with a piece written by Whitacre himself for us! It’s always worth signing up to the newsletter for Interkultur to see what other wonderful opportunities there are in Europe for similar events. Combining our mutual love for music, socializing and travel make these events the perfect fit for ESME.

The very first outside choral event some of our ESME members participated in was Sir Karl Jenkins‘ “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” in November of 2018, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. This took place in Berlin, and was conducted by none other than the famous composer himself. Like the Barcelona event, this was a unique opportunity to work personally with the very man who wrote the music, and meet hundreds (in this case, thousands!) of singers from around the world. And, once again, the audience and performers were brought to tears by the moving music (and images). A truly unforgettable experience, and you can view it in its entirety here!

Last November just a small crew of us (four singers, to be exact, one of whom came along simply to watch the concert) also participated in a long weekend in Vienna, sponsored by Kunst & Kultur, rehearsing and performing most of Händel’s Messiah in the awe inspiring setting of the historic St. Stephen’s Cathedral. As the Christmas markets were starting up during our stay, we were also able to combine the rehearsals with the festivity of the season and partake in the pleasures of Glühwein and such, surrounded by sparking lights and jolly stands selling the usual variety of lovely goods. It certainly put us all in the holiday spirit!

And, looking further back yet on that difficult era of the onset of the Covid crisis, many of us certainly had plenty of opportunities to join virtual choirs to keep our vocal muscles and brains flexed during a time when in-person rehearsals for ESME were a challenge. A few of us have enjoyed the Stay at Home Choir, now rebranded as the WorldChoir – they just celebrated their 5th anniversary in London with a gala concert at Cadogan Hall , and thusly singers who had only seen each other’s faces in Zooms for years were able to make music together in person, and it was thrilling! Founding ESME member and dedicated alto Emily Tuffley took part in this exciting event, as well as some of other Stay At Home Choir gigs with Sir Karl Jenkins in Germany and Austria. Amazingly, the WorldChoir has continued with virtual projects featuring very esteemed conductors and choristers (VOCES8, The Swingles and the King’s Singers, to name a few) and will continue to do so, so please check their website for upcoming projects (there is even a good chance that their next big in-person concert weekend will take place in a German-speaking country next year!).

It’s a small world in the choral community; one of our Armed Man Berlin conductors and former members of the World Choir for Peace , Alexander Koller, has his own Austria-based organization, Konekto, putting on similar events, which also employs the co-creator of the WorldChoir, Tori Longdon. Tori will be conducting a “Come & Sing” event in Ingolstadt the last weekend of November, featuring European Christmas carols. And yes, a few of our Singers have signed up! Seeing as Ingolstadt is only an hour’s train ride away from Munich, this was a hard one to pass up. There are still spaces available – male voices in particular are always welcome, of course!

We are keeping track of other possibilities to spread our wings and voices across the continent and maybe even the world…so stay tuned, no pun intended!

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by Emily Burnell Petrou

We’ve had a nice relaxing summer break (despite some rather non-summery weather after a record-breaking heatwave in June!) and all three of our ESME ensembles (Orchestra, Singers and the Resident Alien Big Band) are ready to get back together for our weekly rehearsals. The RABB, under the leadership of the dynamic duo of Davy (conductor) and Elaine (manager) Kazan, have already started rehearsing together at Kreativ Garage, preparing for their exciting Big Band Karaoke event at Kulturzentrum Neue Ziegelei, on Friday 17 October, starting at 19:30, with doors open at 19:00 (for more information to register and check out the growing song list, look here). The Singers, conducted by Julia Chalfin and managed by Finley Klee, and Orchestra, conducted by Orhan Ahiskal and managed by Maia Schmidt, kick off their rehearsals from 19:00 – 21:00 on Wednesday, 10 September and Monday, 15 September, respectively, at the usual location of Einstein Kultur. And this season we’ll be debuting a new concert administrator with a member from our Singers, Elli Wieser, who will be assisting our concert manager and artistic director since 2022, Jolanta Barszczewska-Godenir. We are so grateful to our many volunteers for stepping up and putting in their hard work for ESME when they are already juggling busy and productive lives, so thank you to all of you!

We are always on the lookout for new musicians in all three ensembles, so please check this page for openings and we’ll get back to you! The Orchestra is open for all instruments, the Singers need more tenors (and basses) and the RABB is on the lookout for (2nd) bass trombone and (2nd) 3rd trombone, a guitarist (comfortable with extended jazz chords/solos), and a solo jazz trumpet player comfortable in improv.

We’ll also be working (and playing) hard at our semi-annual ESME Weekend Away from 21 – 23 November at the Humboldt Institute at Bad Schüssenried. We have been having these retreats at this location (as well as others) since the very first one held in April 2012 by the Orchestra (then the “TT Orchestra”; ESME’s origins are due to the Toytown Munich expat website way back in 2008!), so it holds a special place in our hearts.

Our winter concert will be at the beautiful and historic Künstlerhaus am Lenbachplatz on Saturday, 13 December, with a time to be announced. Be sure to watch this space, as well as our Facebook and Instagram for further updates. We will be featuring our usual wide variety of musical genres, everything from pop to jazz to classical, including pieces from “Wicked” (just in time for the release of the film “Wicked: For Good”, the second half of the opus), as well as from Händel’s Messiah and other festive holiday favorites.

We can’t wait to prepare yet another concert for you to all enjoy!  (And feel free to subscribe to our blog so you won’t miss a thing!)

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By Emily Burnell Petrou (photos and video by Emily Burnell Petrou, group shot by David Freer)


It’s been quite the summer, what with the record-breaking heatwave in June, followed by incessant rain and cooler weather in July and into August, but that didn’t stop our ESME members from gathering together to enjoy each other’s company after the big summer concert – both at the ESME Biergarten Social at the Augustiner Keller on Sunday, July 20, and the annual Munich Sessions Summer Fest at Rindermarkt on Sunday, August 3, to bop to our own Resident Alien Big Band. Sunblock, cold beer and tables in the shade were musts at the former, while raincoats, umbrellas and waterproof footwear were indispensable at the latter! Despite the many violent cloudbursts, the RABB – under the capable and laid back direction of Davy Kazan – kept the mood joyful and infectious, performing their usual dazzling array of jazz, pop, and Latin beats. Singers Caro Kelley, Elaine Kazan and Carina Little provided lively vocals, and newcomer Eduardo Alfonso de la Fuente, dubbed “The Spanish Michael Bublé” by Davy, made his MSSF debut and kept things swinging, even in the most difficult of circumstances (like crooning Bublé’s “It’s a Beautiful Day” as the rain came down in torrents). One of the highlights was a spontaneous line dance initiated by a few energetic and instructive seniors, which drew in other happy dancers of all ages. The Resident Alien Big Band has performed at every one of these open air Munich Session gigs since its debut in 2017 (where it also rained – and did most years after that as well, to provide us that unique Woodstock vibe, minus the mud pits and LSD). Unfortunately, this was the final Munich Sessions Summer Fest, as the diligent and multitalented founders/organizers – Jackson Lynch (who once sang with the RABB), Patrick Thompson, Alex Keogh and Joel Moser – have too many other commitments in their busy lives. We would like to thank their whole organization for providing so much entertainment and merriment over the years with this fest, and wish them continued success in their various endeavors. You can read more about Munich Sessions here – and don’t forget to check out their groovy merch, too: https://munichsessions.com/. You can also have an exciting chance to take the stage yourself and sing with the band, when the RABB has a Live Karaoke event on Friday, 17 October at the Neue Ziegelei in Bogenhausen. As for ESME, our rehearsals start up again in mid-September to prepare for our popular winter concert on Saturday December 13 at the beautiful Münchner Künstlerhaus, so stay tuned…and enjoy the rest of your summer! (And feel free to subscribe to our blog so you won’t miss a thing!)

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By Özgür Selvi Tasdan (photography by Andreas Zachow)

On Saturday, July 5, 2025, the Wolf-Ferrari-Haus in Ottobrunn came alive with music, laughter, and community spirit as the English-Speaking Music Ensembles (ESME e.V.) presented their Summer Concert. All three ensembles – the ESME Orchestra, the ESME Singers, and the Resident Alien Big Band – took part in the performance, making for a highly entertaining evening.

A Journey Through Time and Sound

The concert began with the ESME Singers, led by Julia Chalfin, who performed a delightful mix of Renaissance madrigals and contemporary pieces. The selection of pieces included the elegance of John Dowland’s Come Again and Fine Knacks for Ladies alongside a playful madrigal-style rendition of the Spice Girls’ Wannabe that surprised the audience. Other notable moments included the haunting Wanting Memories by Ysaye M. Barnwell and the vibrant Indonesian folk song Hela Rotan, delivered with heartfelt energy.

Next, the ESME Orchestra, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Orhan Ahiskal, gave a dynamic and emotionally engaging performance. The orchestra’s take on Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances highlighted their rhythmic precision and flair, while Mozart’s Symphony in D Major (Paris Symphony) added brilliance and balance to the stage. The ESME Orchestra and Singers then united for a powerful rendition of Adiemus by Karl Jenkins, creating a rich and emotional sound.


The Afterparty Not to be Missed 

After a brief break, the celebration continued next door at the Wirtshaus, where the Resident Alien Big Band, led by Davy Kazan, took over. Their setlist moved between funk, swing, and Latin jazz, inviting the audience to dance, sway, or simply enjoy the joyful atmosphere. The band’s talented musicians and charismatic vocalists brought the night to a lively close, leaving an echo of the perfect summer soundtrack. 

A Community Effort 

As always, the concert’s success resulted from the commitment of our volunteers, musicians, board members, conductors, and support teams. Special thanks to those who worked behind the scenes, whether they organized rehearsals, managed logistics, promoted the event, or helped move chairs and equipment, and not forgetting a heartfelt thank-you to our audience, whose energy, support, and applause made the evening truly memorable. 

Keep the Music Going 

If you missed this concert, no need to fret. ESME has more music planned! Upcoming events include: 

• 17 October 2025 – Resident Alien Big Band Live Karaoke at Neue Ziegelei in Bogenhausen

• 13 December 2025 – ESME Winter Concert, Künstlerhaus am Lenbachplatz 

Follow us on Facebook or Instagram, or visit www.esme-ev.de to stay up to date with all of our upcoming performances and events.