The post Emmanuel Mbolela: The Congolese refugee who fights for better migration policy (FILM) appeared first on DREAMA TV.

Albert Frantz is a world-class pianist from Pennsylvania who started playing at the extraordinarily late age of 17. His early piano teacher told his mother to throw her money in the garbage rather than spend it on piano lessons for Albert. He discovered his love for classical music while in high school and his passion made him accomplish seemingly impossible things. He was the first pianist in nearly a decade to win a Fulbright scholarship to study in Vienna just a few years after starting out. This led him to study at the official conservatory of the city of Vienna in Austria, the home country of many of his musical idols.

Even before he could finish his education, he started suffering from scoliosis, first discovered in his adolescence, that virtually incapacitated his piano playing for more than six years. Desperately looking for a therapy that would promise any amount of relief, he found relief through Bikram yoga. No sooner did he recover from his back pain when he broke his left wrist upon getting hit in the face by a tram on a cold and icy Thanksgiving weekend. Breaking a wrist is a nightmare for a pianist. For Albert, it turned out positively in the end, as the injury led him to play pieces by Charles-Valentin Alkan, a 19th-century French virtuoso and one of the only composers to write music for the right hand alone. His music was considered unplayable for over a century and is regarded as the most athletically challenging music ever written for the piano. Albert took it as a challenge, which led to his critically acclaimed debut CD dedicated to Alkan’s music. His debut album was an official jury nomination for the prestigious German Record Critics Award, designed to recognize the “most rigorous standards for supreme achievement and quality” in the field of music recording.

Besides turning his interest to the works of Alkan and Liszt, his back pain also led him to pursue an IRONMAN triathlon. This is especially notable, as there were two situations in which he almost drowned during his childhood. Swimming in open water made Albert panic throughout his adult life. After a change of perspective, Albert found himself training for one of the most challenging sports competitions in the world. He finished his first IRONMAN triathlon – 3.8 km swimming, 180 km cycling and a 42.2 km marathon – on June 28, 2015.

INTERVIEW

Pianists at your level normally start at the age of 8 or even younger…

Even younger! A colleague of mine, a very famous pianist, is sometimes asked by interviewers, “You started the piano late, didn’t you?” to which she answers, “Yes, very late, I was 8.” Often they start at two or three these days, though four or five is very normal. My teacher and mentor Paul Badura-Skoda started at six and he even called that “rather late.” At least that’s what we tend to assume. If there is one thing that I want to communicate – and I hope to do it through my own work in my own field – I think we place limitations on ourselves. We don’t really know our true capabilities, or we let the world place limitations on us. We let other people and society tell us what we can’t do. What if we ask ourselves what we really care about? “What would I do ideally and how far can I go?” We simply don’t know our own potential.

How did you accomplish becoming a world-class pianist and teacher starting at the late age of 17?

I am happy that on the one hand I did have a natural talent, but, on the other hand, I really attribute so much to having found great teachers. I’m absolutely not self-taught. I was just fortunate enough to find wonderful teachers who recognized that I had talent and took me under their wing and really helped me to maximize that. I still need that until this day. I think it’s incredible important to have teachers and mentors and trainers.

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO NORMAL THINGS, LIKE STARTING A FAMILY, GETTING YOUR HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS WITH A WHITE PICKET FENCE, THE FAMILY DOG, ETC. I DIDN’T GO FOR THAT LIFE.”

Which effort was needed to achieve what you achieved so far?

An enormous effort. I wish it hadn’t been quite so much. Actually my parents were not exactly happy. At that time, their idea for me was to go to university and study something that would get me the best job. You’re supposed to do normal things, like starting a family, getting your house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, the family dog, etc. I didn’t go for that life. I think it is a wonderful life path – I know plenty of people who did and lead very happy and very fulfilled lives – but it wasn’t necessarily for me. Growing up, I was always fascinated by science and I always knew that I would become a scientist or an engineer of some sort. Then I discovered music very late, but I knew that it was my real passion, even if I had to go my own way back then, with some significant challenges. At one point, unfortunately I had some major problems with my spine. It looked like I would never be able to perform again. This made me unable to perform for a long time and I did a lot of physical therapy and a lot of sports. Fortunately, I was able to avoid surgery and I am very happy that I didn’t have to go under the knife. In the end, I always kept going. So when It looked like there might not be a way, I just thought to myself that I just need to find it, because there is always a way. It’s just a test. So whenever there is an obstacle and we think we can’t go further, to me that means it is just a test. A test of real power, a test of our commitment, our determination.

Later on you got a Fulbright scholarship and today you are playing in great concert halls and also play endorsements for Bösendorfer. Did you think about that when you were 17, when you started out with playing the piano? Could you imagine something like that back then? 

Yeah, young people, young athletes for example, dream of playing in the major leagues and young creative people, actors, musicians dream of making it big. I don’t know if I thought about that. I just knew there was something in me that I have to pursue. I don’t have some big, glamorous career right now; I am not unknown either, but for me what is most important is the quality of the work that I do. This, for me, is really an important topic. I think in our society, too often we look for shortcuts. We see certain pop stars for example, we see them rise and fall, and sometimes it seems to me that we seek cheap fame, because we think that the fame is going to bring us something. We think that if millions of people like us, then we get all this love. To me it is better to do my best work and to know I really strive to be the best that I can and to find mentors that help me to get better and know that I have done good work. That’s more important to me than doing mediocre work but becoming very famous for it.

On which level do you categorize your playing today?

The important thing is to reach the level of artistry where hopefully nobody cares about how fast your fingers are, and people just concentrate on what you have to say artistically. That is when you transcend technique, what every artist really works on. To me that’s what it is really all about.

Do you think you reached that level already?

Well, it’s my job to be an artist! Which is not to say that other people are not able to play the same pieces better and more expressively. At some point it becomes subjective.

Who is your favorite composer?

Okay, I will give you two answers. One is Beethoven, because of what Beethoven stood for. He represented a real revolution in the concept of what a musical artwork can be. Beethoven created truly self-contained masterworks. Beethoven wrote in a very idealistic manner, and he was extremely aware of his place in cultural history. In some of his later works he really wrote for the future and even said as much.

In the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, for example, he wrote to his publisher: “Now you have a sonata that will keep the pianists busy when they play it in 50 years,” because he knew that it was not for his current generation of pianists. There, he’s referring not only to the extraordinary technical difficulties of this piece, but also to the incredible musical complexity. It was difficult on all levels. I don’t wish to make the argument that a future generation was required to understand it musically. I’m sure there were also other people who understood it in his time, but aesthetically, it was so futuristic. The same can be said of his last string quartets. Some of it sounds like it was written yesterday. Incredible. So Beethoven is one answer.

And the other is: I have this unhealthy obsession with this composer, Charles-Valentin Alkan, whose music I just recorded for my first CD. He is an unjustly neglected and incredibly interesting composer. He was Chopin’s neighbour and best friend in Paris. He wrote the most fascinating and unfortunately the most purely athletic music ever written for the piano. He really makes the performer sweat.

With which historical composer would you like to have dinner?

Definitely Franz Liszt. He is the most interesting.

Why?

Because he was a rock star! He had such an enormous personality. He was also true cosmopolitan. He wasn’t just huddled up in a little apartment, just writing music day and night. He really lived life, he lived a large, grand life. He was surely the most interesting.

“TRY TO DO EVERYTHING TO FIND THE VERY BEST TEACHER AS EARLY IN YOUR STUDIES AS POSSIBLE.”

Which suggestions would you give to young people starting to play the piano? Which tips would you give them? How should they start out playing the piano?

The most important thing is to find a really good teacher, and this is advice for the parents as well. Try to do everything to find the very best teacher as early in your studies as possible. There is a misconception. All too often we make the assumption that an entry-level teacher is good enough. It’s understandable—parents just want to see whether their child likes music. Yet I think the most advanced, the most experienced and the very best teachers need to be teaching as early in the learning process as possible and not simply at the very advanced, already professional stages.

Which hobbies do you have besides playing the piano? Lately, I saw you quite often in fast cars!

Yes that’s a new hobby (laughing out loud). Racing cars.  I have to be careful about that. I’ve gotten to chase Formula One drivers around the racetrack! It definitely makes me nervous. But that’s a fun hobby. I decided one day that life consists of more than just working. There are so many rich experiences to be had. At some point I thought, I have to live more. So when an opportunity comes up, now I say yes, and then find a way. Often these kinds of opportunities are opportunities for growth. We tend to limit ourselves way too much. I am definitely nervous sitting at the wheel of a supercar on a racetrack. But that is an opportunity for growth. We regret the times when we say no to such opportunities. That’s my latest hobby. Another one is that I do a lot of sports and I trained for several years to complete an Ironman. It was a goal I had for several years, actually more of a fantasy than a real goal. And then I thought – wait a second – I am not getting younger. The time to start is now.

What was it like training for the Ironman?

Above all there’s a major time commitment. The official recommendation from the Ironman organization is at least 15 hours a week of endurance training just to get to the finish line. It requires total dedication. No excuses. I didn’t always feel like working out for hours in bad weather but I knew I couldn’t let that stop me from reaching that finish line. I learned to love extreme heat or cold since it makes for such great training opportunities. People don’t work out because it’s uncomfortable. It’s easier to sit at home. Then, when they do work out it’s too easy to seek comfort in discomfort, to make the inherent discomfort as comfortable as possible. This attitude makes it all too easy to convince yourself it’s “too this” or “too that” to work out that day. I learned to turn this around: The worse the weather, the greater the motivation! You can’t control the weather on race day, so you just have to be prepared for anything.

I spread my Ironman dream out over three years. This included starting running again after twenty years (after a very halfhearted attempt the year before), learning to ride a fast time trial bike with aerobars, and learning how to swim. I’m still surprised every time I don’t drown!

How did it feel to cross the Ironman finish line?

It was exhilarating. The first thing my coach, Paul Nelsen, said to me was, “You don’t even look tired.” And amazingly I didn’t feel tired. I was just so overwhelmed.

Is this your advice for other people? Just speak out your dream and go for it?

Yes, absolutely. It’s not about just going for things recklessly, though. I think that deep down we know – I say this but then I remember Steve Jobs said it as well, and much more eloquently – deep down we know who we really want to become. Everybody has dreams. Some dreams only have to be done once to realize, like skydiving. That can be done once and it is accomplished. Other dreams are more about who you become, becoming a pianist in my case. That was something that took years and is ongoing. I think often our dreams are much closer than we think. I don’t think we could seriously entertain a dream unless some part of us deep down knew that we are capable of achieving it.

Coming to the last question: What is your dream?

I have so many of them actually. My biggest one is to make as much of a contribution as I am able to in my lifetime. That’s truly my biggest dream. Even if it’s in this tiny part of the world called classical music and even if it’s a relatively small number of people who care about it or appreciate my work. My biggest dream is to make as much of a contribution as possible. And I want to do that in three ways: through my playing, by becoming as good as I can become and leaving behind my best work. The second way is through education. I am equally passionate about education as I am about playing. And the third way is that I hope to inspire some more people to question our limitations. I think we are capable of so much more than we think we are.

Additional information:

Official Website: http://key-notes.com/

Photography: David Visnjic

The post Albert Frantz: A concert pianist who started at 17 (FILM) appeared first on DREAMA TV.

He never got on with the banks. Capitalism is abhorrent to him. He sees their exploitative wrongdoings personally in regular trips to Africa. For example, cobalt mining and the accompanying degradation of rivers and lakes in Congo, in his opinion one of the most beautiful regions of the world.

We’re visiting Heini Staudinger, 62. In the small nest of Schrems, Lower Austria, near the Czech border, a man with a huge grin approaches us. “Hi, I’m Heini, a warm welcome to Schrems.” We’re standing in the courtyard of the Waldviertler shoe factory, which doubles up as Heini’s garden. He has lived in a former storage room in the factory since 1991. It is around noon. The atmosphere at the table as we eat lunch is delightfully familiar. The boss’ smile seems to affect his whole staff, who always say hello and are ready to talk with you for hours.

Heini grew up as the son of a greengrocer in Schwanenstadt in Upper Austria. After finishing school he went on his first trip to Africa; a 12,000km journey on a 50cc Puch moped with his best friend. From Austria, through the Sahara to Tanzania. The impressions he got on this journey would deeply influence his life. He was fascinated by the humility and generosity of the people there. Nobody has anything and yet everybody has so much.

He spreads these values until today in his company. Firstly they made him study medicine and then later, completely on a whim, become a shoe salesman. He packed his sleeping bag and hitchhiked up to Denmark to buy his first batch of shoes. He borrowed the money from friends and never once entertained the idea of going to a bank. Some years later he founded the Waldviertler shoe factory and independently manages every area of the business, from the production right through to distribution to the customer.

Over the years Heini has invented a new way of advertising, concentrated on content marketing, a term that hadn’t even been invented at the time and has financed new warehouses at the factory by borrowing money from friends, long before crowd funding was even a thing. By doing this he has also dumfounded the Austrian financial authorities, who prosecuted him for illegal banking procedures. Heini battled it until the highest court in the land. He lost the case but played a huge role in the formation of the Austrian crowdfunding law.

The story of a rebel who lives his life with humility and sustainability and who started the process of change while others were merely crying out for it.

INTERVIEW

Please tell me a bit about your background.

I grew up in the small town of Schwanenstadt. My parents were greengrocers and I’m the oldest of five siblings. My family’s living environment was pretty much the grocers itself, it was totally mixed up with the shop. There was a door from the living room to the kitchen and another door that led to the shop. Everyone in the family had to work, that’s still the backbone of my entrepreneurship today. I learned to greet people when I was two and at only three years old I learned how to serve and attend. At the age of six, we were all able to do some mental arithmetic. But what I think is the most important thing is that I learned humility. The greengrocer business suffered from the time I was born. And as it got worse and worse, my parents said, “As long as we can make a living, there’s nothing to complain about.” I heard the same thing later on in school, expressed a little bit more elegantly, in a quote from Seneca; “Never is too little which is sufficient.” This attitude still helps me today in running the Waldviertler Schuhfabrik.

Young Heini Staudinger and his sister in front of their parents grocery shop.

During your schooldays, you broke out of Schwanenstadt for the first time.

Exactly. I went to a Catholic college in Linz. When I got there in 1963, it was essentially a penitentiary. Interestingly, in the seven years I went there, it underwent a complete process of change. The reason was that the spirit of ’68 was infused into the college. We had a prefect who was employed as an educator by the bishop, though he hadn’t been an educator. And he thought about how the perfect educator would act. He was a Catholic preacher who thought, “The perfect educator must be God”. And then he thought about which tools God would use as an educator, the most important of which was trust. So from then on, trust was his most important tool. In practice, this meant that we enjoyed total freedom in the 7^th and 8^th grade. That was a significant event in my life. At the same time, this experiment led to the biggest educational success in the history of the school, 14 out of 24 boys started to study theology, one of them was me.

Your enthusiasm did not last long.

One semester, to be exact. For me, no one was excited and believed enough. I studied science of communications and politics for another semester in Salzburg, when a friend wrote me a letter where he informed me that he would stop his studies, planned to travel to Africa and asked whether I wanted to join him. I wrote back a card that had only one word: Yes.

Heini Staudinger saying farewell to his mum before his trip to Africa.

How did you manage to finance this trip being just 19 years old?

1972 was the year of the Olympic Games in Munich. We earned 3,000 German Marks (around 1,500 Euros) for dumb work – night watchmen. With that money, we bought two mopeds and traveled to Africa. 12,000 kilometers in six months. We started off on December 12, 1972, in the middle of the winter.

That sounds like a huge adventure.

It was indeed! We first went to Palermo, then moved on to Tunis by ferry and from there crossed the Sahara desert, first to Western and then to Central and Eastern Africa. It was an unbelievable time in my life. In Nigeria, for example, we went to the area where Boko Haram is now so active, which makes me really sad. Another example is East Congo. During my life I had been asked several times what I found was the most beautiful landscape in the world and I always answered, East Congo. The 5,000-meter-high Ruwenzori mountains in the East and the steaming jungle in the West. Rivers, lakes, woods – blossom in unbelievable glory, fruits in all colours. The soil is so fertile it’s jaw-dropping! Five potato harvests a year. And exactly in that paradise, people had bad luck, as the soil contains the coltan that we need for the production of smartphones. Through that coveted mineral, an economical war started that killed six million people. And the rivers and lakes are now so polluted that no animal would ever drink out of it. I find that enormously tragic, as we enjoyed unbelievable hospitality there, such that we Europeans should feel embarrassed, as we will never reach such a level of magnanimity. After six months we reached our goal in Tanzania. These times will always be in my memory.

What did your parents say when you told them your plans?

When we told our parents that we wanted to go to Africa, they said, “You’re crazy, finish your studies first and then you can still go afterwards”. Then they realised somehow, that logical arguments weren’t going to work here so my mum played the emotional card and said, “If you go, I’ll die!” On the day we left I said to her, “See you, I’m going so I guess you’re going to die!” We both cried. She didn’t die but we did leave. Even that was an important thing to go through, to not buckle under that emotional pressure. Willy Reich would say that I followed my own sense of longing – that is the key moment where life opens up in front of you.

What’s the story behind you starting a shoe company?

Upon getting back from Africa we realised that we had never actually talked about what we were going to do once we got home. We both started studying medicine because of the awful illnesses and desperation we had seen in Africa and I increasingly became aware that the problems in the third world were clearly linked to the craziness we have at home. I was studying for an important pathology exam with my friend Peter, who passed while I failed. He had a rich father who gave him 10,000 Austrian Schilling with which he went shopping in Munich.

We met later in Café Merkur on Florianigasse and he showed me what he had bought. He was completely made up with the shoes he had bought, which you couldn’t get anywhere in Austria. I looked under the table at these shoes and he’s still going on about them and so I lifted my head and said, “You know what Peter? I’m going to stop studying medicine and become a shoes salesman”.

You changed your life plans from one minute to the next?

Indeed! I hadn’t been interested in shoes for a day in my life but in that moment everything fell into place and I’m still astounded, 35 years on, that it all happened like this.

What were the first steps into your new life then?

I hitchhiked up to Denmark and hid my sleeping bag in a park so that they wouldn’t realise that I was poor and travelling like a homeless person. I went into the company’s office and said, “I’d like to sell your shoes in Austria”. They said, “Super!” I told them that I didn’t have any experience in selling shoes and that they should help me put in a first order. They wrote out an order for 300,000 Austrian Schilling. I had no money, so to hide it from them I signed with a smile and hitchhiked back home!

I rung my friends up and asked if they could lend me money as I had bought 300,000 Schilling’s worth of shoes and within two days I had the money I needed to start. I didn’t consider for a moment that I could have gone to a bank to ask for the money; doing it among friends was much more personal for me.

When I came back to Vienna, I cycled through the streets for an hour and found an empty shop that I liked because the sun was shining into the shop window. I rang the landlord, we went to a tobacco shop to buy a lease contract and five minutes later everything was fixed. The contract is still effective today! Sometimes I think that in many areas it would be good to go back to the simplicity of those times.

How did your first years as an entrepreneur work out?

Shortly after the first shop opened, friends of mine opened shops across Austria. After the rebranding, the company was renamed to GEA in 1984, the Waldviertler shoe factory was established. I was totally unsatisfied with the reliability of my Danish suppliers and by happy coincidence, a friend who was shoemaking teacher made a suggestion to found a shoe factory in Schrems (a 3,000 person village in lower Austria). There, the textile industry had just fallen apart and many people were unemployed, so our initiative was supported from different sides.

Heini Staudinger in his new home Schrems, 1991.

You became CEO of the shoe factory a few years later. Why did you move to Schrems from Vienna?

The company has never really been completely been economically sound. So as the debts continued to grow, the shoemakers got scared that they would have to pay back the 8,000 Schilling’s worth of loans that they had taken out and started searching around in panic for someone to give the company to. Then Gerhard Benkö, who was  a business manager at the time, and I took over the firm in 1991. And because the company didn’t have any money and we couldn’t afford a business manager who would have had an idea about how to get out of debt, I couldn’t think of anyone who could have done the work for free apart from myself. I had been able to live off the shoe business so it was a piece of cake to roll my sleeves up and get going. I didn’t think for a second that I should have looked for an apartment in Schrems, I just put a bed in a sort of garage and slept there. I worked in the staff room and about ten years ago I got a wooden floor and heating so I’m pretty much living like a king!

Heini’s new home in Schrems, an empty storage room located in the factory.

From then on, you had a double burden…

I was in the Waldviertel region of Austria trying to get the company there healthy and up and running again and while that was happening, my own company GEA was slipping into crisis. I wasn’t able to see it for a long time and when I did finally catch on, it was nearly too late. When we had no money left in 1997, I had the thought that helping each other, saving and working hard was the way out of this mess.

What were some practical steps out of the crisis?

As I thought about saving, I thought that it’s most effective where we’ve got the most expensive people on the books, which in our case was the advertising specialists. I had a friend who was an unemployed architect and I said to him, “Didi, let’s try and put an advert together”. Advertising is actually shit; they bother us on TV, on the radio, as we’re driving along looking at scenery and now on the internet. So since we’re having to advertise, I wanted to gift a little bit of fuel for the heart and mind as a thank you for looking in the first place. That’s how we got onto the idea of these advertising brochures where every second is a full-page photo with a poem or philosophical or literary text.

I think that we’re doing these brochures right when they answer one fundamental question: What are doing here in the world? This here is a favourite passage of mine, which I found in a book from Dorothee Sölle, ‘Mystik and Widerstand’. It says, ‘Boundlessly happy, completely fearless, always in difficulty. This is all part of the potential of our life’.

Content marketing of the first hour.

Indeed. Funnily enough with these brochures that Didi and I had created, we had our first advertisements where we could measure their impact in turnover afterwards. And we had some unbelievable success with them. The company grew 40% in 1999 and we were lifted out of the debt and losses of 1997 in quick fashion. In 1999 I was invited to a meeting with the bank where I was told that our credit limit was being reduced from 12 million Schilling to 7 million Schilling, something that made me livid when I first heard it but something that I am thankful for now as I was then able to say, “Being independent of any kind of group is the most important thing for my company”.

This led to your crowdfunding activities later on. Do you feel a higher sort of obligation to your private investors than you would to a bank?

You can definitely say that. All in all, it’s now 350 people who lent us almost five million Euros. If the money had come from a bank, I obviously wouldn’t wish for us to go bankrupt but when I imagine that we could cause any sort of damage to people who were kind enough to lend us money because we made a mistake, I would really hate it. These people have not only lent us their money, they have also wished us the best for the development of our company. They wish that we act sustainably with their money. On the one side, I feel that we have a strong moral obligation, on the other hand it’s a warm and positive connection following the principle of not letting each other down. Now we invite our investors once a year to our factory. We show them what we do with their money and our tax accountant answers all of their questions. This gives me a very special feeling – economics can be that beautiful. If only a small part of our economy worked like this, it would have an enormous educational potential where people could gain a huge range of competences.

Your economical approach was not exactly well received by everyone. When did you start putting your moral sense over the common laws?

Through our approach we came into conflict with the Austrian Financial Market Authority, who accused us of running illegal bank businesses. And what they demanded from me was essentially impossible. They wanted us to pay back the money we had borrowed from private people within a few weeks. You could ruin almost any company in Austria if loans are terminated in a very short time frame but the problem was that I had no choice. I couldn’t just go to the bank and say, “I need a loan because I need to pay back the money I received from private investors”. The banker would have felt it’s absurd.

Where did you find the confidence to take the case to the supreme court?

My disobedience towards the FMA was ultimately obedience towards my colleagues and the work we are doing here. When I realised afterwards that the whole community was behind me, being brave was a piece of cake. Now I think that just like there are contagious illnesses there is contagious health, and just like fear can be contagious, so can courage. D und I have seen some crazy things – like walking through Vienna, having cars stop in front of us and people shouting at us, “Don’t let them bring you down!” Somehow with this wind at my back, being courageous isn’t very hard. I think that we should share this courageous wind with as many people as possible as there are so many things that are screaming out for change and that won’t happen unless we tackle the issues at hand. It’s all there in what we want for the world. We want to put the things that we see and hope for back into motion.

How do you approach things that you want to tackle? Do you have any advice?

I think I have a strange talent for perseverance. I often find myself playing around with thoughts in my head and I can’t leave it, though I sometimes wish I could – wish I could not permanently think about something! But if things that are important to me capture me, I permanently need to think about them. Perseverance. Somebody once said it was stubbornness, to which I say, “No, in ‘I Ging’, the Chinese book, there are many encouraging phrases concerning our lives. And the last sentence always reads, ‘And if you want to succeed, be persistent’.”

Heini on his Puch MC 50.

What do you still want to achieve in your life?

My goal is to find a model of how to run a business that is communal and as compatible with people and nature as possible. If I could do that and it were copied a hundred times by other people, I would be very happy. The way economics is set up now is destroying the planet and leaving at least a billion people behind. Gregor Gyzi said it nicely when he said, “If we don’t take responsibility for the third world, they’ll come to us”. It’s also noticeable how we are already at the maximum point of this way of living and that we’re barely able to hold the lid on it all. And so I believe that something big is coming. If we are able to see it as a challenge to our humanity, one which we are ready to take on, it could be a major success. The egomania that has been dominant in the last few decades cannot be the way forward. It’s tragic that in this way of life, even the ‘winners’ aren’t winning. I don’t know anyone who has been able to live in these consumeristic times where I would say, “He’s got it all together. I want to be like him”. Not even a little.

The post Heini Staudinger: The shoemaker who dedicated his life to challenging conventions (FILM) appeared first on DREAMA TV.

During his civil service, Matthias Hombauer found an interest in the human body that led him to study molecular biology and later go on to a PhD in immunology. After seven years of studying and working as a researcher, he found himself reflecting on whether this really was his true passion. He realised that the romantic picture he had when thinking about life as a researcher just wasn’t true.

One day, he was sitting on a bicycle, riding to work when his thoughts turned to that which he had been passionate about throughout his life: music and photography. Arriving at work, he googled the term concert photographer – a term that would change his life.

He started shooting concerts at local clubs, built up a portfolio and saved money from his job as a researcher to invest in professional photo equipment. After finishing his PhD he decided to jump in at the deep end and dedicate his life to music photography. He started out shooting jobs for magazines to make a living and went on shooting concerts in the evening, where he found his true passion. A passion he shares with many people around the globe. That’s what has lead him to share his experiences in a blo, which helps newcomers face the challenges he faced himself.

On How to become a Rockstar Photographer, Matthias shares his experience of working with artists like Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy, Shantel and even the Rolling Stones. The online platform helps him finance his life and may soon help fulfil his next dream: shooting portraits of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.

INTERVIEW

Tell me a bit about your background. What did you do before you became a music photographer?

I grew up in Austria, finished high school with a focus on electrical engineering and then, during my civil service, found my passion for the human body. I wanted to find out how our bodies work in detail, I think that’s something we learn way too little about as human beings. This interest made me attend a 3-year academy for medical technology and then led me on to study molecular biology. At that time I dreamed of winning a Nobel Prize as a researcher, went on to do my PhD in the field of immunology and started working on basic research, the foundation for any further studies. During my PhD I lost this love for research and started reflecting on whether it was really the right thing for me.

When did you figure out that being a researcher wasn’t the right thing for you?

Actually it was when I really started working as a researcher. I totally loved my studies even though molecular biology is everything but an easy subject and the masters alone took me more than five years. Then I started my PhD which meant working as a researcher and I went into the field of basic research, working on a mouse model, observing cells. It was really fun in the beginning but after two years of basically doing the same thing everyday, I started doubting that I wanted to spend the rest of my life like it. I couldn’t handle it long term – hard work that doesn’t even guarantee an outcome. I missed something that could give me a quick outcome and satisfaction.

“THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I CAME TO THE LAB WAS OPEN GOOGLE AND SEARCH FOR ‘CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHER’. IT TURNED OUT THAT THIS SIMPLE SEARCH QUERY WOULD CHANGE MY LIFE.”.

That’s when you thought about photography?

Well, I did some photography when I was around 20. Back then I went to Hong Kong and Taiwan with a Lomo (an LCA Kompakt Automat, to be specific). There was a big hype around analogue photography and Lomo back then, and I met local lomographers there and had fun shooting some random stuff. During my teenage years, I played in a black metal band and I always had a great passion for music. At the beginning of my PhD, I started taking photos again as a hobby and two years later, one day on the way to work, I was sitting on my bike and thought: „Why not combine my passion for music and photography and become a music photographer?“. The first thing I did when I came to the lab was open Google and search for „Concert photographer“. It turned out that this simple search query would change my life.

You still went on for two years and finished your PhD. Why?

The main reason for that was that I had spent more than seven years studying already and thought that it wouldn’t be bad for me to have a PhD. The other reason might have been that I’m quite a risk-conscious person. I thought about getting a job as a lecturer, work for thirty hours a week and spending the rest of my time with photography but the closer I got to the end of my studies, the clearer it was that I needed to put all my energy in this one goal. In the last two years of my studies, I went out to shoot concerts three days a week, building up my portfolio as well as my equipment. I got deeper and deeper into photography and also learned about online marketing and sales in my spare time. When I eventually finished my PhD, I already had an offer to work for a magazine as well as a portfolio of concert pictures and everything I needed to start my second career path.

Being a photographer is a quite unstable job, it’s not easy to make a business out of it. How much money did you save from your work as a researcher? How much time did you buy yourself?

That’s a great question. I had enough money to survive half a year, but more importantly I had already bought proper equipment and had started to build up a portfolio of my first clients while I still had a steady income. This may not be the kickass way to do things, but I think especially in a field like photography it is good to have a safety net and it makes no sense to start out and then be forced to sell your camera because you run out of money and you need to start over again.

“DURING THE CONCERT, THE SINGER GAVE ME A SIGN TO COME SHOOT IN FRONT OF HIM AND SO I WAS STANDING BETWEEN HIM AND 50,000 PEOPLE. THERE I WAS, A BOY FROM A VILLAGE IN AUSTRIA, SHARING A STAGE WITH MY IDOLS.”.

How did you move on from there?

I shot loads of concerts and then one day saw that Fatboy Slim was in town. I thought, I’ve got nothing to lose and so I contacted the management. They got back to me and invited me to shoot the show. And not only that, I got the chance to do a 30 minute portrait shoot as well! I was extremely nervous on the way to the venue but everything worked out fine and he even invited me on stage. Suddenly I was standing in front of 30,000 people and it was just the most incredible thing I had done so far in my life.

Then The Prodigy, who have been my idols since I was 15, came to town. Same thing, only this time 50.000 people! During the concert, the singer gave me a sign to come shoot in front of him and so I was standing between him and 50,000 people. There I was, a boy from a village in Austria sharing a stage with my idols. I had never had so much adrenaline pumping through me. From then on I knew that I was heading in the right direction and did everything to continue on with my journey. Shooting concerts and bands, that’s where I’m in my element. Shooting stuff for money is fine with me, weddings, family portraits, editorial work, but concert photography is where my real passion lies.

And so you did…

Yeah, it went on. Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello and then the world tour with Shantel.

How did it come to you going on a world tour with Shantel?

Shantel plays in Vienna three or four times a year and sells out every show. I shot some of his shows, then my first portrait session with him and then one day, they called me and asked me to shoot his tour photo, which would be on posters around the world. That’s how we kept in contact over the years. And one day I went on a small tour in Austria and Germany with him, we got quite close and he asked me if I would join him on his world tour, first stop: Mexico. Of course I said yes, it was like a dream come true. He played as a DJ in Mexico city in front of 200 people and the crowd went totally nuts. The other stops were Brooklyn and Canada, where he played two shows in front of 50,000 people and several shows around Europe. That was really a dream come true for me.

What would you consider the most special experiences in your career so far?

First definitely shooting The Prodigy. I mean, they were my idols and they trusted me to come on stage. A show of the Prodigy mainly consists of strobe and haze and if you run over an amp or unplug a cable, you’re in serious trouble. So that was really an honour for me.

Secondly I met a band called Vintage trouble at a festival in the middle of nowhere in Canada. They played after Shantel, were really well dressed and asked if I could do some portraits. Two years later, AC/DC played a show in front of 120,000 people in Austria and well, this band called Vintage Trouble played the warm-up show. So after two years, I got in contact with them again via Facebook and asked if they wanted to collaborate. That was two days before the actual concert! They agreed but I didn’t have any official accreditation and when I got there, the network was down due to the huge amount of people there. In the end, everything worked out for the best and I found myself in front of 120,000 people. It was the biggest single concert in Austria ever, and as Vintage Trouble was playing right before AC/DC, the whole crowd was already there. Unbelieveable. I really got the feeling of what it must be like to be a rockstar.

How did you come up with the idea of starting your online business?

I started out writing guest articles about my work quite early on in my career. I got featured on Digital Photography School which was founded by Darren Rowse, a very famous blogger and one of the founding members of Problogger. That’s when I first got in touch with the world of blogging. I then started out with my project How to become a rockstar photographer. At first, it was all about my camera settings and technical stuff,  but then I recognized that the things people really struggle with are more related to how they even get to work with artists and bands. How do I get to photograph bigger bands? How do I make a living out of it? We all face the same challenges. So that’s where I set the focus of my blog and my upcoming video course. On top of that I wrote my e-book Guide to Rockstar Concert Photography, a 170-page pdf that helped me build up an international community and helped with the monetization of my blog. I have now sold more than 300 e-books.

How did you start with online marketing as a total newbie?

The same way I taught myself guitar and photography: I’m self-taught.

What do you enjoy more – a band telling you that they like your photos or somebody who thanks you for sharing your knowledge?

Good question. I’d say both in equal measure. Of course it’s the biggest appreciation I can get when artists I admire tell me that they like my photos or even feature it in their album booklet. That was the case with the new album by The Prodigy, The Day is my Enemy. At the same time, I get several emails a day where people tell me that I have helped them in becoming better photographers. There was one artist who told me that she’s been doing the job for ten years but she’s never been as satisfied with her work as she is now, as she has got so much better through the knowledge I shared. Of course, that’s a huge honour for me and it motivates me to go on.

“I GOT AN EMAIL FROM INSTAGRAM FRANCE AND MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT IT HAD TO BE SPAM. BUT THE LADY WHO WROTE THE EMAIL ASKED FOR A PHONE CALL, SO I THOUGHT, WHY NOT JUST GIVE IT A TRY. AND YES, IT WAS INSTAGRAM.”.

Your online presence led Instagram to invite you to shoot a festival in France. What’s the story behind that?

Yeah, that’s also a crazy story. I got an email from Instagram France and my first thought was that it had to be spam. But the lady who wrote the email asked for a phone call, so I thought, why not just give it a try. And yes, it was Instagram. What I didn’t know is that the company has a branch in France as well as their headquarters in the U.S. They were searching for a photographer who would take over the official Instagram feed for a festival called Frankofolies Festival in La Rochelle on the western side of France. 5 days, 10 stages and 90 bands almost exclusively from France. What was funny was that there were already around 100 photographers there, all of whom were wondering why that had invited this foreigner! I was wondering it myself, actually. But in the end I see it as further appreciation for my work and it was great fun.

Has photography brought you closer to music again?

I would say it gives me the opportunity to look behind the scenes. If you’re at a concert as a fan you often only see the video wall and everything seems so surreal. There’s these stars on stage and they seem so untouchable. If you’re on tour with a band, you get to see what it really means to be an artist. They tour over the course of weeks, many people in a very small space and then they have a small number of days off before they go on touring again. And you can’t allow yourself to lose your voice or get sick or anything so it needs lots of discipline and hard work. That definitely gave me a different view of what it means to be a rockstar.

What’s the aim for your blog?

I want to definitely reach more people with the blog, as well as with the upcoming video course. And naturally I want to earn my income with it, which would allow me to go on with the work I truly love and respect. Surviving as a concert photographer alone is almost impossible, so instead you do normal photojobs like portrait photography or editorial shoots or you have a second income stream. There’s some money to earn if you work directly with bands and shoot their promotional photos but no chance with concert photography alone. I talked to people who have been in the business for 40 years and none of them could name even one photographer who earns his money with concert photography alone. That’s what I also teach in my course. Concert photography will not be your main job, so find another way of earning some money and enjoy being close to your idols, I mean that’s the reason so many people want to get into shooting concerts.

Did you face any serious downs over the years?

In the beginning I had a down every month! (laughs) In the meantime, I’d say I’m quite stable, as I work for magazines like Forbes here in Austria and also have a good client base. But at the beginning it was hard for sure. You shoot a wedding once in a while as well as stuff for magazines but you only see expenses and almost no income! So you get frustrated. But that’s the same with every person who runs their own business, there’s days when you’re totally down and don’t know how to go on and the next day you get this email and you’re flying high again. In that moment you know that it is what you’re supposed to do. Every major goal in life needs dedication over years. A painter once told me that if you stay in the business for long enough, it will work out one day and that’s how I see it. At the moment, I’d say I’m living my dream life and I want to encourage everyone to go for their goals, no matter how far away they might seem.

Check out some of Matthias’ Photos:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Matthias’ official Website

Portrait photography: Jure Vukadin

The post Matthias Hombauer: The university researcher who became a music photographer (FILM) appeared first on DREAMA TV.