amarcord Wolfram Lattke • Martin Lattke • Frank Ozimek • Daniel Knauft • Holger Krause Sunday Concert Series: German Vocal Quintet amarcord Sings Romantic and World Music This Sunday, April 3, the Gardner Museumʼs Sunday Concert Series welcomes renowned German vocal quintet amarcord to MassArtʼs Pozen Center for an afternoon of a cappella song. @the gardner caught up with bass Daniel Knauft, a founding member of amarcord, by phone from Stuttgart, Germany, to ask a few questions about the group and the upcoming performance. amarcord has been singing together for nearly two decades now—in fact, 2012 will mark your twentieth anniversary. How did the group get its start? We first met as choirboys in the St. Thomas Boys Choir (or Thomanerchor) in Leipzig, where we all sang together from the age of nine to eighteen. The choir was made famous by Johann Sebastian Bach [Bach served as choir director from 1723-1750 and is buried in the churchyard], and his spirit is all around. We grew up performing Bach works by heart. You should also bear in mind that this was East Germany in the 1980s, on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Imagine what the music of Bach meant to people who werenʼt allowed to live their faith or travel where they wanted. In that atmosphere, protected by the work of Bach, we grew up pretty freely, touring to West Germany and Japan, among other places. Of course, as children you take this for granted, but the older you get the more you realize how special it was. We formed this group in 1992, when the oldest among us was aging out of the choir but we didnʼt want to stop singing together. It began as a mere hobby, but over the years it has become a real vocation (a vocal vocation, if you will!) Where does the name amarcord come from? Amarcord is the title of a movie by Federico Fellini. In Felliniʼs native dialect, amarcord Wolfram Lattke • Martin Lattke • Frank Ozimek • Daniel Knauft • Holger Krause ʻamarcordʼ means ʻI remember.ʼ Itʼs a crazy, panoptic look at childhood, a story of boys growing up together. The movie is much crazier than our childhood, but we feel aligned with it in a way, as a common remembrance of the time that we spent together growing up. What are some of the highlights of the last 19 years? I will always remember the recording of our first CD—and then the first time we took first prize in a major German music competition (in 2002). Winning the competition at that time really convinced us that we were heading in the right direction. In 1997, we started the International Festival of A Cappella Vocal Music. We didnʼt think of starting a festival at the time—it was just a fifth birthday idea—but we kept going and over the years it turned into a real festival. Every year, a cappella groups from around the world (for example, Chanticleer, Anonymous 4, The Kingʼs Singers, and the Hilliard Ensemble) come to compete and to work with and listen to other groups. This year, we will also have an a cappella arrangement competition as part of the festival, so we are looking forward to that. Actually, the first time we were in Boston, we were here to work with Simon Carrington, a founding member of The Kingʼs Singers. Weʼve kept up a wonderful relationship with him, and heʼs now the head of the festivalʼs jury. How does your musical process work as a group? There is no musical director. Itʼs pretty much like a string quartet: five individuals with a shared background. Itʼs important for everyone to be involved in the process by working together on the interpretation of a certain piece and bringing in new music. We have to choose music very carefully, because there isnʼt a lot out there written for groups like ours. We have a rehearsal studio in the middle of Leipzig and we see each other every day. When the group first started, we met for one hour a week on Wednesday nights and the beer was more important than the rehearsal—but that has changed. Now, we rehearse about six hours every day, but a lot of that time is spent talking about text and about interpretation. Itʼs a real privilege to be able to take the time to really discuss things fully, and to have colleagues who share the same interests. What will you be performing at the Gardner? The first half of the program is going to feature music of the Romantic era. Thatʼs one of the genres we really feel at home in, so itʼll give a nice insight into our core repertory. We are going to sing Romantic music from all over Europe: works with different languages and subjects, but a similar vocal color. amarcord Wolfram Lattke • Martin Lattke • Frank Ozimek • Daniel Knauft • Holger Krause The second half will be a selection of folk songs that we have collected on our tours all over the world, performed in arrangements that have been done for us by friends. These pieces mean a lot to us; when we sing them, we remember how we first heard them or the person who gave them to us. Itʼs always amazing to experience the reaction of people wherever you go, when you sing to them in their native language. Iʼll never forget a tour to Southeast Asia: we sang Vietnamese and Filipino music in those countries, and the audience really understood. When that understanding comes back to you as a singer, it is one of the most beautiful feelings. So youʼll be singing some American songs in the second half of the program? We donʼt usually reveal the program in advance, because we are always collecting music and things can change pretty quickly. But yes, I can tell you that we do have some spirituals and folk songs in our repertoire! .