The International Song Center Heidelberg, founded by the Heidelberg Frühling Music Festival, together with its scholars from the Lied Academy, was not deterred by the limitations imposed by the mandatory cultural closure due to the pandemic and invested its resources and efforts in a new project entitled ”Lied Me. ”

The new project explored the future of the song through new narrative methods in the digital space. In sum, 11 young scholarship recipients of the Lied Academy were commissioned by the International Song Center to look for new ways of thinking about the aesthetic experience of the song and for how people become addicted to songs. They studied and analyzed this question for several months, until they found the answer.

The result is the production of nine short films, which are now freely accessible on a number of digital platforms, including www.takt1.de.

The nine short films deal with issues of social relevance and current affairs in everyday life. Here is a rundown of the participants:

KETEVAN CHUNTISHVILI Soprano (Georgia)

THERESA PILSL Soprano (Germany)

FANNY SOYER Soprano (France)

JERICA STEKLASA Soprano (Slowenien)

EMA NIKOLOVSKA Mezzo (Canada/Macedonia)

IRENA WEBER Mezzo (Serbia)

LARS CONRAD Baritone (Germany)

JEEYOUNG LIM Bass Baritone (South Korea)

JUSTINE ECKHAUT Piano (France)

KUNAL LAHIRY Piano (USA)

DANIEL GERZENBERG Piano (Germany)

“Lied Me! is an immensely important project for us – not only because Corona has given it a completely different meaning: Our endeavor at the International Song Centre Heidelberg is to give young singers and pianists the freedom to focus on what they do. We do not dictate what they should and should not do. Rather, we want to enable them to exploit their creative potential – always accompanied by experts. We want to make a young generation of artists and their world of ideas audible. They are the future of song and their generation our future audience,” said the founder of the Song Centre and director of Heidelberger Frühling Thorsten Schmidt in a press release.

The fellows were mentored by Holger Noltze, professor of music at the Technical University of Dortmund, as well as Andrea Thilo, Thomas Grube and Uwe Dierks.