PortraitThe MusiciansUlrike Höfs, Flute

Ulrike Höfs, Flute

What brought you to music, and why do you play your instrument? My musical career began in a nonmusical, but very supportive family. Shortly after someone mistakenly gave me a recorder at the age of five, I realized that all I wanted to become in my life was a musician. For me, music was the most beautiful thing the world had to offer. I was very lucky with my teachers, all of whom motivated me and taught me valuable things to prepare me for my professional life. Later, I was able to gain my first orchestra experience in the regional and national youth orchestra and the Young German Philharmonic and eventually cultivate extensive contacts with ›kindred spirits.‹ I still have wonderful memories of the wind rehearsals with our wind instructor from that time, Lutz Köhler. We all learned a tremendous amount from him. After graduation, I initially studied in Karlsruhe under Renate Greiss-Armin, then with Peter-Lukas Graf in Basel. During and after my student days, I got to know many professional orchestras through internships and substituting, until I was then able to play in my ›favorite orchestra‹

Ulrike Höfs, flute (Photo: Julia Baier)

What is special about this orchestra? For me the special thing about our orchestra is that we always ›pull together‹ onstage. No matter how constructive the rehearsals were (always somewhat variable, depending on the conductor and/or the musicians' concentration), at the concert the energy flow is right. We may be tired before or after, but never during a concert. I think each individual feels supported by this functioning team. Since we are a ›grass-roots democratic‹ orchestra, most decisions are made by the general meeting. These processes are time-consuming, at times trying, because of the (thank goodness) strong personalities involved, but, for the most part, constructive. Perhaps that is one reason why we really value the projects that have developed from the collaboration between the program committee, office, board, and general meeting, so that we can experience the most important thing, the reason we are on earth - to be musicians with heart and soul. What is your motivation for doing educational projects? Since neither of my parents are musicians, I know how important it is for children to receive encouragement from the outside. It gives me great pleasure to pass on ›my most beautiful thing in the world‹ (and our precious shared cultural asset). I am always tremendously pleased to see the children's sparkling eyes and the enthusiasm of our young public. What was your most memorable experience in the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen? There have been countless musical highlights during my DDKB days. One of the best, and perhaps most important, was our first Beethoven cycle in Japan (Yokohama) with Paavo Järvi, which demanded the last reserves of strength from many of us and ended with joyful, exhausted celebrating after the concluding Ninth Symphony. Another tour lingers in my memory for different reasons - a tour which started from Berlin during the hot summer of 2002 with a charter (which was much too small for all our things and threw the tour escorts into a chaos of unsolvable problems) and took us to Italy and France. As I recall, we played the fifth concert in Rome, and I still have wonderful memories of the pasta we ate there under sunny skies. During the previous days, because of increasingly longer delays at the airports, we just managed to reach the concert halls but had no opportunity to get anything to eat, except for the skimpy Italian hotel breakfasts and meager catering on the plane.

This page was last changed on 18-12-2009, 10:07 AM