Frankfurt Musikmesse 2013

[wizzarts]

Hello everybody,

this is day 0...

Tomorrow I go to the Frankfurt Musikmesse, one of the largest music exhibitions world wide with more than 1,800 Exhibitors from 60 different countries. I am sharing a booth with my publishers.

My last-minute-panic is just past, all scores are done, flyers arrived just in time... phhhh....

Tomorrow at 6am we drive from Rheinbach (Cologne-area) to Frankfurt/Main which means in fact a 2h car-ride. Hotels are always booked a year in front so we drive home every day.

In addition to the friends who are there every year I will meet Bob Lombardi (Avid) and, hopefully, Daniel Spreadbury. This will be very interesting.

If there is something you are interested in please let me know. (Publisher-adresses, studios or whatever...)


More information can be found here:

musik.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/en/besucher/willkommen.html


Next post tomorrow night...

[Joseph]

ready, shoot, aim!

forget I asked about vendors . . . 

[Deleted]

Well, try to find time to visit Altes Cafe Dauth Schneider,in Saachsenhausen, just across the Eisener Steg from the Frankfurter Dom. Also, the Beethoven memorial, in Bockenheimer Anlage, near the opera house.

Richard

[Kevin]

And don't forget our friend PB Smith

[wizzarts]

Day 1

Today we arrived at 9:00am at our booth. Scores and Flyers were placed very quick and the, of course, .... coffee!!

It took me more than 3 hours to shake hands to everybody I know from last year.

Schott, Avid, Steinberg, Alfred, Doblinger, Wasbe, German Army Music Chorps, GEMA, Clarino, to list a few of them.

After some lunch in the Tulip Club our booth was totally filled with customers and musicians, so it took a while to answer all their questions about my music. In 2013/2014 one of my pieces is listed for competition which in fact means all orchestras participating on such a competition will have to one of three possible pieces. Mine is one of them.

Mr. Johannes Benger from the DBMV (transl. German Association for Concertband) has picked 4 more scores for competitions in 2014/2015, not selected but shortlisted. There is a real chance that "Floy" might win the race.

To Kevin: Best greetings from Mr. Peter B. Smith.

Mr. Andryk (Kistner & Siegel) sold "Ahvos Lied" a few times. It is quite interesting watching conductors reading the score and someone else explains my music.

At 5pm I finally went to another hall to meet Mr. Bob Lombardi to verify an appointment on Saturday.
He loves Irish Whiskey as much as I do! I guess this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship... (Anyone know this movie?)

I hope you don't mind but I am fatally tired.

So lets see what comes tomorrow...

Here is our booth at 9:30am when the first customers popped in...

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[wizzarts]

Day 2

This day was the "Day of Orchestras". A lot of ochestras and conductors entered our booth. So it was a really busy morning.

The absolute show-stopper was my "Vegetarische Suite" for young concertband (Grade 2) which contains 5 easy pieces called "Tanz der Chili-Schoten", "Triumphmarsch der Kohlköpfe", "Selerie in Love", "Zwiebel-Strip" and "Der Tod der Tomate". It is ordered 13 times.

In a meeting with Dr. Andryk a new series of violin-duets was born: The Twiolin Selection. We were thinking of a contest explicitly for SOS-members.

1st prize will be a contract and 150,- Euro,
2nd prize will be a contract plus 100,-Euro
3rd prize will be a contract and 50,- Euro.

This is the idea. Details will be discussed later. This might be a chance for both the members and the SOS-board.

At 2pm I had the chance to listen to the worlds biggest Tuba. It was unbeleavable what a full and round tone in the lowest possible octave could be done with a 50kg piece of brass (tubelength 11,20m)

Later on I took part on a meeting of composers discussing whether or not sample-players and sound-lib will replace real orchestras or will they co-exist or combined.
The quintessence was: "You are the composers. It lays in your hand..."

And finally some more good news. At the end of May the Kistner & Siegel online-shop will be active. At this time Kistner and Siegel will start gathering talented composers. Dr. Andryk was listening to some of our music on the SOS Forum and was really touched.

I will do a post with further information in 2-3 weeks. Now-a-days it is very rare that a publisher is looking for new composers.

Unfortunately no pictures today. I was too busy.

[Deleted]

Andy, I love your titles!

Richard

[wizzarts]

Thank you Richard,

in September I will do a recording session with the SWO Wehdel. When you hear this piece you will surely change your point of view on a Minestrone

Café Schneider is still there.... But the owner has changed....

3ndy

[Deleted]

Well, considering that I last visited there in 1963, it is not surprising that there is new ownership.

My friend at Hessischer Rundfunk had to work late, and thus could not meet an out of town visitor and wife. I had never met the couple, and had no picture. They had asked my friend to meet them at a Gasthaus, but gave a completely erroneous name. So I had to find a couple I had never met, no idea of appearance, located at a club somewhere in Frankfurt am Main. My friend had no doubt that I would be successful. I was. I checked out about 5 places,the last being Dauth Schneider. The first person I spoke to on my search, asking "Sind Sie Kurt Kellert?" responded "Ja." I am still proud of that accomplishment!

[wizzarts]

Day 3

Today I had the chance to see our conductor in action... He is playing the first trombone in the German Army Bigband.

This was a pretty good start for today.

A lot of officials came to our booth to plan the next concertband competitions which means actually I was captured in our meeting room for 3 hours!

At 1pm I took the chance to go to the wind instrument-hall. I played all sorts of trumpets and flugelhorns. That was fun.

Later on I had the chance to participate in a discussion about the difference of music education in USA and Germany. This was very interesting.
(I will do a separate post to go into detail.)

Finally we have had our "Happy Hour" at 5pm. A Quintett from the German Army Concertband played a lot of our stuff at our place. We served champagne and some fingerfood. All the publishers appeared and we had very nice conversations until 8pm (Actually the security asked us to go!)

Tomorrow the place will be open for the public. So not only vendors, dealers and pros can visit the fair but also amateur bands and all sort of musicians.

This will be the hardest day - (as usual)

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[wizzarts]

Day 4 (finally, sorry for the delay)

Saturday is usually for public visitors which means there is a run such like "the Oklahoma-run".

We had to prepare our booth a bit and when just finished we couldn't move a single step.

Fortunately I had scheduled a few appointments so I could hide myself in our "back-stage".

One was another meeting with the Twiolins. www.thetwiolins.de/the-twiolins/

We decided to split the newly created series called "The Twiolins Selection" into 3 sections. Each will represent a specific grade.
This is a great chance to fill the lack of compositions for 2 violins for education and competitions such like "Jugend musiziert", a famous competition in Germany where young with all sorts of instruments can participate.

This will be the composing competition in the near future.
Dividing this into different grades also makes sure that our SOS-competition does not interfere the pro-composers-competition done every 3 years by the Twiolins themselves.


The next appointment was a retreat for discussion and review with Dr. Andryk. It was more the character of a brainstorming.
We talked about the new series for young stringorchestras. In Germany it is quite common to mix levels but compositions are rare for those concepts.
So we will do a score-request here at the board soon as we got all infos about grading, ranges, postitions, keys, etc...

We also will get in contact with some of you to ask for signing a contract. Once again listening to your music was a very joyful thing and there is a lot of music that should be spread around the world.


The last appointment for the day was with Mr. Lombardi and he had very good news to anounce.

They were working hard on an update for Scorch. Beta-testing started yesterday.
There will be a new version of Sibelius very soon. This version has more the character of an update or a version in between. (7.5)
In this version a lot of requests and ideas will be implemented.

Avid-people are taking every single post very seriously and are taking care of every user-category, - engravers, composers, educators and studio-guys.

After a good shot of Tullamore Dew the day was nearly done. (Take it in all varities of interpretation. You can't do wrong )

It took an hour and everything was packed for the truck.

So this was it, - Musikmesse 2013. I would be delighted to welcome some of you the next year.

I will add some more pictures tonight to give you some expression...

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[Joseph]

Andy, of course the picture of the virtual organ intrigues me.  Can you provide some info as to what we are looking at?  Joseph

[wizzarts]

Hi Joseph,

the organ is a "Replica Laurensorgel". It is a combination of a traditional air-driven pipeorgan and a sample-based PC-organ. Unfortunately I missed the presentation. But the developers are VPO from the Netherlands.

As far as I know it is a replique of the Rotterdam Laurens Orgel.

3ndy

[ceg]

Andy,

Do you know if the new "7.5" version of Sibelius is one we are likely to have to pay to upgrade to?

Cheers

Charles

[Kevin]

I would have thought if it was called 7.5 it would be free. Also they need to keep all us users sweet!

[ceg]

I think "7.5" may have been Andy's terminology, not Avid's

And it is an interesting question the extent to which they have to keep us users sweet. Once we have bought Sibelius, they don't get much out of us in a strict financial sense until we have to pay for an upgrade

[wizzarts]

Hey you all,

not my termitology That is what Bobby said. It will not be a major update but a lot of bug fixes and some intregrated features coming from the request-board.

Termitology - end

couldn't resist...