BERLIED 

JUSTINE ECKHAUT & SOPHIA STERN

● Welcome to your interview session with Songbirds! You are the first two people we are interviewing. Please introduce yourselves to our audience.

Sophia: Hi. I am Sophia Stern. I am a mezzosoprano and a librettist living in Berlin for 8 years. I‘m originally French-American- German. I studied at the UdK (Universität der Künste), where I finished my second Bachelors in Opera Singing after having previously studied Comparative Literature in London, so I

have these two parallel passions for literature and for music. It was therefore only natural that I found great love in exploring “Lied”, one of the most beautiful forms of art that brings literature and music together, focusing on telling miniature stories with unbelievable emotion and a broad range of feelings and colors.

When I met Justine in 2020 on a “Winterreise” project, we immediately got along, (also because of the French

connection). She told me about her wonderful project, which had just begun called “berlied” and I joined the team at the end of 2021 and have enjoyed every moment since.

Justine: A “Winterreise” Project that actually never happened because of Covid (Chuckles), but we met!

So, I am Justine Eckhaut, French pianist. I studied in Lille first, where my family is from, then at the CNSM de Lyon, which is one of our two major conservatories in France. Then I went for an Erasmus exchange at the UdK and never left Berlin because I got a position (faculty pianist) at the UdK and also started working at the Staatsoper unter den Linden. Then Covid came and I had the idea of reimagining the wonderful and intimate house concert format that happen so often in Berlin with “Lied”, the genre that has been with me for such a long time. I started playing Schubert as a kid because my grandparents had a book of Schubert songs translated into French, which I then played for my enjoyment. In France, we also start with accompaniment and sight reading at an early stage in our piano education, so I started playing with singers at 17. Berlied was a very natural step for me to take as a musician with this background and I am very happy with how it has grown over the years, although it can be tough at times, we have created a creative platform, where we are absolutely free and can invite all the artists that inspire us.

● If I recall correctly, the first year of the festival was quite different to how it is now. Tell us about the process of how it all began.

J: It all was possible due to the amount of free time I had at home doing nothing (laughs). So I had the time to start a Verein (association), which is not very musical but nonetheless important for a festival like this to take place. I also had long walks with our graphic designer, Bernd, who originally has a bigger passion for baroque music, but also loves Lied, and he dreamt up this initiative with me, then things started taking shape very fast, I had to organize a venue, the concerts, all in such short notice. It was so much learning by doing. Then the whole festival started to take the form it has today.

● You are both co-artistic directors of the festival, but you can’t share the same mind. Who would you say is the ‘dreamer’, and who is the ‘realist’?

(Both laugh)

S: This is like one of those games where we need to answer the same thing to prove our compatibility!

I guess I tend to be idealistic in general. I get very easily inspired by large ideas, and then I get ahead of myself. (To Justine) Do you agree?

J: I do agree. I thought before that I was the creative one, but clearly I was mistaken. We have a Team WhatsApp group, and we jokingly say that I am the party-pooper (all laugh). I’m always saying that we can’t afford something, but our festival has definitely grown a lot because of your ideas and how you write texts. Don’t get me wrong, you (Sophia) are also very organized, but sometimes I see more into what is possible in terms of budget and time. We actually really need both sides. It needs the crazy.

S: Also, it’s not always like this. Justine obviously also has great ideas and I will then have my few moments of saying ‘no’. But this is what teamwork is and I really appreciate working with Justine over the years. I feel like we’ve found our balance, although it was an instant connection right from the start. Over the four years, we have learned a lot by doing as well, and I really appreciate how we are honest with each other. We usually have to start out with 200% initiative and ideas. Then we scale down and end up with a product that is more fulfilling, rather than starting with too little material to work with and adding elements last second, which would be very stressful. In that sense, it is very important to have a team of co-artistic directors, so that we have both the ‘dreamer’ and the ‘realist’, because it takes a lot of pressure away from one person and having this constant dialogue helps build something at once creative and pragmatic.

J: Also on a bigger scale, we both have jobs and private lives outside of the festival. We therefore have mood-swings, and sometimes one has more time than the other. We can then adapt to one another very well.

● When you plan the festival, do you focus more on individual programs, or more on how the programs will work together in a bigger picture? 

J: The biggest question we have every year is: ‘Do we want a theme?’ And we have decided to keep it diverse and broad every year. We have tried to have family-concerts, baroque music, and it’s okay if we have back-to-back concerts with two sopranos. Lied is already a very niche genre, and we want everyone to find something to which they can relate.

S: That’s really well put. It’s all about having a really broad scope. It is a very rich genre, we also wanted to show how 18th century music can fit together with contemporary music, how baroque music fits into the scope of a Lied festival – normally not so much. The fact that the genre is so broad can open up the listeners’ ears and surprise them with different connections that you wouldn’t normally make. We start our season planning about a year before the festival and have been receiving more and more programs throughout the years, which we look through carefully. Then we try to find a 50-50 balance of programs we receive and programs that we curate ourselves. It’s not always perfectly balanced, but we believe it is important to curate our own programs and also have existing programs that fit well with our vision, not necessarily a theme but more of quality of curiosity, surprise and commitment towards rediscovering works, so we really appreciate it when artists come to us with programs that are clearly well-researched and also full of passion. Some of these programs don’t always align with traditional concert hall programming, not to bash those venues, we really appreciate these venues and what they have to offer, but we also want to offer something different that one might not always get at a classical concert, which as Justine mentioned, is a very niche thing to do (both laugh).

J: Last year we also had about 15 program proposals, which took us about 2-3 hours to go through. It was such an inspiration to us as well.

S: Yes, what an honor and also in a way it’s very difficult to be in this position of having to choose what to present at the festival.

J: We try to mirror what we would like to receive as musicians ourselves when we apply for festivals. We try to always respond to all of the proposals. We reply by saying it will take us time to process everything, or even when a program is not selected for the festival, we will let them know, I mean, we have all experienced that as artists.

S: I think that is a particular quality of our festival that comes from it being run by people that are musicians themselves.

● We have followed berlied every year and now, you guys are moving to a different location. Tell us how that happened.

S: It was our idea to move to the Kühlhaus. I actually discovered the venue from tango dancing because the 5th floor was used for tango dancing every weekend. It is a very intimate space, but also it has a very interesting history, and when we decided to ask them if they were interested in a cooperation, it just felt very right.

● Could you explain to us what we can expect from this year‘s berlied? The Program, the artists etc.?

 J: We wanted to mix different styles, eras, personalities and directions. We let everyone have more freedom. Coincidentally, we found a common theme in the programs: Nature conservation. For example, the opening concert is based on birdsong. It is not only about birds, but it also imitates sounds from birds by using different instruments and field-recordings of birds. This also displays the different spaces that are being threatened in nature, which then links well with Rachel Fenlon‘s program, which contains different recordings of natural sounds.

 S: The program built itself slowly over time. Building up, then finding new orders for the programs, and reconstructing from scratch. We liked the process of finding mini parallels between the 6 programs. We have another nature theme program: for example, the program “Sea Fever“, where water will be brought to life through live painting as well. This will be our family-friendly concert which brings along drama and storytelling into the mixture, so it will be a very multi-disciplinary concert for sure. We also wanted to have representation of different cultures, genres and languages, so “Sea Fever” will have Danish and English songs, and in our other programs as well, we will have Japanese songs, American folk music, Indy music, French mélodies, German Lied. In the program that I sing, we will also be bringing in different elements: guitar, synth, electronics and spoken word. This will be a nice parallel with Rachel’s program. It will bring together contemporary interpretation of 19th century music and electronics to experiment with what new aspects it could bring. Is it too jarring? What new elements will it add to traditional song culture? We will be experiencing all of this in our program.

● Who is the 3rd team member?

S: Yes! We have a wonderful 3rd woman in our team. Her name is Johanna Ernst, and she studies Music Management in Munich. She will also be starting at the Beethoven Fest in Bonn. It’s been amazing to have her come on board through Justine.

● What I find always very interesting about berlied is how you have found a way to communicate with the audience on a more intimate level. What’s your secret? Is it classified?

S: This is going to sound silly, but the main inspiration is my mother and her very keen eye with lighting. I now think ‘how would my mother light this space?’. Our families are very often present and we want it to be a warm space for families to come to, like a house concert. You walk into a living room and even if you don’t know anyone else there, you want to stay after the concert to get to know the people there. That’s the vibe we like to go for. That’s our trick.

J: I have something to add. We have held the festival in non-conventional spaces and have found a very poetic setting in them. We can do this through very honest feedback from our friends and colleagues.

● To Sophia: you have a wide range of genres that you expand towards: song, opera, Alte Musik, Musicals and also poetry. How does that help you with managing the festival?

S: Well, there is a lot of writing involved. We have to figure out how to brand the festival, how to communicate the essence of the festival in limited words. That’s something we do collaboratively and this is creative writing to an extent. We don’t want it to sound dry, we want to think creatively and use words that will inspire. That’s one aspect of it. Also when we are deliberating which programs to include, this is very text-based work. I also love singing different genres of music: Lied, Opera, Baroque and now Musicals as well. This doesn’t necessarily help me as an artistic director, but I appreciate it when programs offer us variety.

J: I also have to add: when you go to a “Winterreise”, you know what you will be getting out of that concert. But our programs offer a lot of variety and often music that isn’t familiar. I attend big festivals for new music, and sometimes after reading their program booklet, I have no idea what it’s about. This can be nice as well, but it also means that the audience goes home without really realizing what they just experienced. Of course we want to have a high standard of expertise and creativity, but we also want to be down-to-earth and be transparent.

S: That is a great point. Not only do we want to reflect a broad scope of music, but we also want to speak to a broad audience, which is a big part of our identity. Of course, we want to keep it experimental and exciting, but at the same time, we want to be accessible to a broad range of people. Our program booklet is a big part of that as well. It is really important that the audience has something to take back home, even study the texts afterwards, if you are nerdy and want to do that (everyone laughs).

● To Justine: you‘ve had success over the last year in competitions: winning the Schubert und die Moderne Competition in Graz for example. You are a very accomplished pianist yourself, but contrary to many pianists who curate their own festivals, you seem to play less yourself in the festival over the years. Is there a reason why?

J: Oh. Too many reasons; I have to organize them. We actually started the festival with only a few concerts and now we have more. I still wanted to deliver high-quality music and I didn’t think I could do that playing 6 concerts with 6 different singers. I also know that a lot of my colleagues work as duos and they have programs that they have constructed for their duo which I didn’t want to take credit for. Of course, there was a financial reason for me to play more. We started with very little budget and I couldn‘t take the risk of relying on ticket sales in the beginning, so I played more concerts back then. Now that we are a bit more established, we can invite other pianists and pay everyone decently!

I also think it is more interesting to have different artists play in the festival. It brings diversity to our programs. On top of that, I love the feeling of sitting in the very back of the room to enjoy the beautiful programs.

● To Sophia: this goes for you as well. You sing maybe one concert a year in the festival, but you always give other artists the space to bloom.

S: I think it’s very important. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure whether I should sing at all, but it happened very naturally. I hope it’s not taken as arrogance or taking space. It’s our way of showing the berlied audience our personal, creative involvement in the festival. We actually performed a concert together to do this as well, back in 2023, but that was the only time we performed together.

● If you both had 3 words to describe the festival, what would they be?

J: Experimental, interdisciplinary and friendship. 

S: Curious, playful and intimate. They’re synonyms to your words. 

● What songbird would the two of you be? 

J: A Swan. It looks gorgeous but sounds terrible. But also the way it inspired musicians (Schubert - Schwanengesang for example). There is something mysterious about their mythology, how a dying bird sings a beautiful last song is very poetic.

S: It might be boring, but I was thinking about the Nightingale. How it imitates sound is like berlied’s identity. We try to imitate different sounds and realities just as the Nightingale’s song is a mixture of different sounds from its surroundings.

● How do other genres of art inspire/affect your work (Pop music, Movies, Visual Arts etc.)

S: That’s a difficult question. I think I could only answer with specific obsessions that I have at the moment. It will change constantly, but at the moment: dance. I love how the body expresses emotions in space and the freedom it creates is very interesting to pair with music.

An Artist that inspires me at the moment is Meredith Monk. She created her own genre to make Gesamtkunstwerk with her own voice, playing piano and incorporating dance alongside repetitive gestural movement. That translating into music is very inspiring. That sounded very nerdy (laughter).

J: I am actually a very visual person at the moment. I realized how much visual imagery I use while working with singers. I’ll quote David Lynch and also Wes Anderson. Sometimes one image from a single film explains so much more than what I can in words. I also have an admiration for Agnès Varda. She made fantastic films and documentaries. She has such a great sense of humor in her movies which draws a parallel to Wolf Lieder.

S: Gosh, we need to talk about this more often!

J: Thank you for helping us programming berlied 2026!

● Lastly, we want to give you the floor to tell us something you would like to add. Or better yet, is there a question you have always wanted to be asked?

J: Maybe not necessarily a question, but I think we have brought people who have never been to classical concerts to berlied. Something we want to communicate with the audience is that classical music is for everyone. There is no need to be scared of contemporary music and it can speak to everyone. The hard part is to actually walk through the door to experience the music, but it can be fun, and you don’t need to have read books about classical music. We are very happy to talk to you about your experience afterwards as well.

S: Where do we see berlied in 5 years? I don’t think we have a definitive answer for this, but the fact that we are constantly questioning ourselves ‘how can we bring different genres together?’ is our driving force. In the coming years, we want to build some new formats. We spoke together about masterclasses as well before. We would love to have the festival spread out throughout the year, but we aren’t quite sure yet. There are a lot of factors that go into play here. One thing we are sure about is that we are very excited about how the festival is going to shape up in the coming years.

Berlied will take place from October 9 until October 12 at Kühlhaus Berlin. More infos on: www.berlied.de and their Instagram: @berliedfestival