Location: Pepper Theater, Thomas-Dehler-Str. 12, 81737 München (U5/7/8 Neuperlach Zentrum)
Celebrating 100 years since George Bernard Shaw’s Nobel Prize win, Entity Theatre presents Arms and the Man – his witty skewering of war heroes and romantic ideals.
Set in turn-of-the-century Bulgaria, young Raina Petkoff’s life is turned upside down by the appearance of a mysterious Serbian soldier seeking refuge in her bedroom. Will this mysterious man be the war hero she has been dreaming of? Or is he an enemy who faced her fiancé across the lines of battle? When both Raina’s fiancé and this mysterious man come back from the war, complications are sure to ensue. But beware: nothing is what it seems at the pen of GB Shaw…
It seems like we just started rehearsals, but already thetickets for our ESME Winter Concert are available for sale! Under the skilled batons of conductors Orhan Ahiskal, Julia Chalfin and Davy Kazan, our ESME Orchestra, ESME Singers and Resident Alien Big Band are working hard to put on another popular festive holiday show for you on Saturday, 13 December at 5 pm, in the beautiful and historic concert hall at the conveniently located Münchner Künstlerhaus, so please book your tickets soon, because this popular annual concert is renowned for selling out!
Oh, what a night! Our own Resident Alien Big Band, under the steady hand of bandleader Davy Kazan, performed their very first Big Band Karaoke event at the grand opening of the Kultur Neue Ziegelei in Bogenhausen on the evening of Saturday, 17 October, to an enthusiastic crowd of spectators and brave participants. Those who signed up – and there were many locals from the neighborhood, not just our confident ESME Singers – had to choose a song from the RABB playlist, and were supported (if needed) on the side by RABB singers Elaine Kazan, Eduardo Alfonso de la Fuente and Caro Kelley, who also served as emcee. All three of these pros also took the stage for a number, dazzling the merry crowd, who quickly filled the dance floor. Special thanks go to our former Einstein Kultur organizer, Vivian Peruth, for making this whole gig possible in the first place, and it was such a smashing success that plans are now underway for a repeat performance next spring at the same venue, on the evening of Saturday, 7 March, 2026, from 19:30 – 22:00, so mark your calendars now and watch this space for further details next year. You can see our Resident Alien Big Band take the stage once again, along with the ESME Orchestra and Singers, for our popular winter concert on Saturday, 13 December at 5 pm at the Munich Künstlerhaus am Lenbachplatz, and TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE! Hope to see you all there!
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.
(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!)
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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