YG: Caroline, you have a very diverse musical repertoire. Can you tell our readers about your background, do you come from a family of musicians?
My mother is from Brussels. My father fled East Germany for Belgium shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall, where he met my mother, and they later came to Germany together. My family does nothing at all with music. But they do enjoy listening to music and I appreciated a lot of music at home while growing up. This definitely contributed to my interest.
YG: So you're the first in your family to go into music? Did they approve of your career choice?
No, this wasn’t accepted at all in the beginning. Since then of course they have come to accept it. They attend my concerts, think they’re fantastic, and they are very proud. Since the time I’ve shown them that I’m able to earn a living doing this that is.
YG: You studied at the renowned Hochschule für Musik Detmold. How important is it to find the right institute at which to study music?
I was very inexperienced. I didn’t know who was the best instructor for me. I only heard people talking about this professor or that one. Everyone wanted to study under my professor, Peter Ziethen. He was a really nice professor and a very good teacher, but I found my time in university very hard. There was a lot of competition. It’s not as though you’re casually making music with one another. You’re always striving to be better. You have to practice a lot. After you’re given a song to perform, you practice nonstop, hoping that it’s somehow good. You don’t really have a relationship with the music. You don’t know how you really sound or if it was well performed. Your own development as a singer doesn’t really happen until after university. The quiet and relaxation needed to bring about good music is not there. Music has to do with sensitivity, and that you can’t really feel when you’re under so much stress.
YG: And after your studies in Detmold, you went onto the Züricher Hochschule der Künste?
Yes, and there was an instructor there who was very important for me in terms of my voice. He really helped me to find my own expression and look at questions like: What can I do with my voice? What do I actually find beautiful? Rather than singing an entire set of operatic arias in a particular way, I sang how and what I liked. That really developed my voice, that freedom, and this was really good for me.
YG: Why did you choose this profession, what were your initial impressions of it?
This has to do with a very early event in my life. When I was four or five, I went to a children’s theater performance of the “Little Red Riding Hood”. I was totally taken away, mystified, and kept thinking this is such an amazing world that I don’t even know about, and I want to be a part of it. It was a dream world, the stage. Before studying music, I studied communications, but even during that time I sang in jazz clubs and played in independent theaters. I always felt that it was fantastic to be on stage and I wanted to be a part of it. I felt that I could become a lot better if I studied, and after learning about the music programs, decided I'd do that.
YG: So did you work in communications?
Well, I worked in an advertising agency in Münster to finance my music studies. I also worked for local radio and contributed pieces. I’d go to events like a festival and collect audio and file two-minute reports. This was for News 89.4. My pieces were always pretty bad because there was so much noise in the background, and a lot of music, and I found it better when there was noise and music in the background. I was always more interested in the music.
YG: After you completed your studies, how did you go about building a career in the music field?
I followed a rather unusual path. After exams, many people look for a way to an opera career. There are two exams, the musical exam and the teaching one. If you’re good, but average in terms of the field, you have to know your earning potential. For this reason, it’s really important to be able to teach. After exams, I went to the Lichtenberger Institute in Odenwald and did a 3-year internship in Applied Physiology of the Voice. I was really fascinated with the voice as an instrument, and what happens in the body with this instrument. I didn’t want to teach from this theoretical place of the operatic arias, but rather from the feeling of being in concert with nature that comes when one knows their own voice and enjoys singing. After my internship, I performed with a small orchestra in Darmstadt and started to earn a little money. I also sang at a church there, where I had a room to give lessons. I distributed a lot of flyers and made a website. Most people who came to me for singing lessons came through the website.
YG: You have two sides of your career, teaching and performance, and your repertoire is vast, from opera to jazz. How do you manage such a large body of work?
This can be seen either as a deficit or a strength. You can specialize and say for example that you only deal with a certain kind of music, from a certain period with the particular instruments of that time. You can be that limited and become very good with that. It’s difficult though, because there’s always the possibility that there’s someone out there who's better than you, and they have CD’s and you have to determine where you’re going to go with this specialization. This can be very difficult. I always thought that this path was too difficult. For this reason I came into jazz and chansons. Before my studies, I was performing in these types of clubs and I really enjoyed it, and I had people who wanted me to perform in these venues, so I knew I could earn a living doing this. I didn’t want to really be stuck in one particular type of music, but rather do everything I could with my own voice, which I really enjoyed doing. It’s also good when giving lessons to give music history across a broad scope.
YG: As someone working in the creative sector, how do you stay creative?
I have so many ideas. The problem is that they’re difficult to implement because I have to do everything myself. I have to do my website alone. And my flyers. I have to organize rooms for instruction alone and make my own advertising. I really do everything alone and that's hard. The most important thing for me is to get enough sleep. I have more than enough ideas, but I know that if I’m not well rested I can’t see them through. When you’re a musician it's nice to have a partner, especially when you’re preparing for large events. It’s also nicer to be creative with a music partner, when you don’t have to do everything alone.
YG: As a soloist, how does one build a network of musicians to organize performances?
This is very hard, especially in the beginning. You put up flyers in music schools and ask around. I know so many people, but rarely do I work with anyone for a longer time. Also when you’ve so much to do as a freelancer, there’s less of an interest to respond to offers that are non-paying, like meeting with other musicians to talk about forming a network and so on.
YG: How important is location, when building such a career?
I find Frankfurt really inspiring. I came from Münster, where I had the feeling that everything to do with music was connected to a particular school or institute. It’s difficult in such an environment to do your own thing. But in Frankfurt, it’s much more free. You meet other musicians at concerts and events. When I came in 2007, I saw young people everywhere out at night. They spoke English and Spanish, and I found it super and decided I would build my career here. However, there is the problem that Frankfurt's a rather expensive city, and it's difficult to find an affordable room for teaching.
YG: Is there a possibility for a subvention to support the creative industries in Frankfurt?
Yes, I’ve written the Frankfurt Culture Department Head Felix Semmelroth and he responded. There’s an initiative – Leerstehende Räume für Kreative (Open Rooms for Creatives) that connects available spaces with creatives who need an inexpensive place to teach. This already exists for artists, but for musicians, we’re too loud for these rooms. It will take some time before the initiative can be realized.
YG: In closing, what is the most important thing you’d like to share with music students who want to pursue a career in this field?
The most important thing is to have a relationship with your own voice. Don’t just accept the opinions of others, but do what you like and what’s good for you. For some people this happens quickly, for others, it takes longer, but you should never loose sight of this. It's also very important that you build relationships early on. I didn’t do this early enough. Go to events to present yourself, because that’s much closer to an open door. You need to have a lot of power to keep going in this demanding field. Keep practicing all the time and be open to the many possibilities. And be really, really organized.
This interview conducted and translated from German by Angela Boskovitch.
