Who are the students on the Dichterliebe Project?

Our students have in common the fact that they are all amateur musicians aged 30 or older.

Apart from this basic similarity, our students are people from a wide range of different backgrounds who wish to come together to share in their love of music and music-making and to learn from and perform for each other.

How do you fit in?

There is something for everyone on the Dichterliebe Project.

The course is designed to be challenging and interesting for advanced amateur musicians, while also offering beginner and intermediate-level musicians the opportunity to participate in a manner that suits their interest and ability.

On the Winterreise Project, a similar course that ran in 2015, our collaborators included singers and pianists aged between 32 and 86, with professions including a cook, a number of nurses, some public servants, some stay-at-home parents, some music teachers, an elementary school teacher, an electrician, a lawyer, a chemist, and retired people from different backgrounds.

Some of our students held master’s degrees in piano or voice, while others were new to music-making, having taken it up only as adults and within the last few years.

Follow this link to meet the Winterreise Collaborators.

Students on the Dichterliebe Project

The Dichterliebe Project offered places in a number of categories to suit the interests and experience of a wide range of amateur musicians. Read on to learn more.

Performers. Intermediate and advanced singers and pianists wishing to hone their skills as part of a number of performing singer-pianist duos applied to the Dichterliebe Project as Performers.

Performers take weekly solo and duo coachings with the instructors, and they also perform regularly in the weekly performance classes, seminars, workshops, and interpretation classes throughout the course.

Each Performer works on between two and six songs from the cycle across the course, studying these in solo and duo coachings, exploring them through performance in the performance classes and interpretation classes, and working on them privately with their duo partners.

Performers sing or play in the ‘Dichterliebe Omnibus’ – a private concert for staff and students in which everyone performs all the pieces they have been working on.

Performers can also opt to take part in the Final Student Concerts. Performers will sing or play in at least one of the two Final Student Concerts (singing or playing two or more of the pieces they have studied across the course).

They can also opt to take part in the presentation Performing Dichterliebe, a 30-minute pre-concert talk written and presented by the students that precedes the Final Student Concert on both nights.

Understudies. Understudies are beginner and intermediate pianists and singers who are less experienced as performers, or who love music-making but prefer not to perform regularly in the classes.

Understudies take a greater number of solo and duo coachings with the instructors than the Performers, and Understudies perform for the group only toward the end of the course – and then only if they opt to.

Understudies can choose to ‘shadow’ the Performers who are working on their songs, sitting in on their duo coaching sessions and standing in for them if they are unable to perform in weekend sessions and/or final performances.

Understudies will sing or play at the Dichterliebe Omnibus (private concert for staff and students), and they can opt to perform in the final concerts if any of their ‘shadow’ Performers is unable to sing or play.

Understudies will also take part in the pre-concert presentation Performing Dichterliebe that takes place before each of the Final Student Concerts.

Auditors. Music lovers of all ages were welcome to join the Dichterliebe Project as Auditors. Auditors attend all group sessions on the Dichterliebe project, including performance classes, seminars, workshops, interpretation classes, faculty open rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and all our informal gatherings and concerts.

Auditors play an important role in the project, providing a regular audience of interested listeners in all the ensemble sessions, and offering feedback and commentary throughout the project for our singers, pianists, and faculty.

I hope you can imagine yourself joining us in one of these capacities on one of our future projects!