Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
A Social Project Without Intention
The orchestra was founded, in the words of its director Albert Schmitt, “against all odds” in the 1980s. At the time, the German musical landscape already included 160 orchestras, almost all of them financed by more than 90% through public funding. It was a professional sector characterised by job security and stability.
A new generation of musicians, most of them coming from the German Youth Orchestra, were also seeking professional stability, but they refused to give up their creative freedom. They wanted to explore what it meant to be an artist in every possible sense. They identified themselves as entrepreneurs making art, rather than as public employees simply doing a job.
As expected, their idea generated considerable resistance within the sector. Nevertheless, after several existential crises, the orchestra managed to survive. By the 1990s, the number of state-funded orchestras had been reduced to 127; meanwhile, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie was thriving and approaching its finest moment.
Their management model is unconventional, as the musicians themselves own the orchestra. They are responsible not only for what happens on stage, but also for the administrative management of the organisation. Especially during the early years, the musicians had to take charge of every aspect of the orchestra’s management. Drawing once again on their entrepreneurial mindset, they relied on initiative, courage, and responsibility. Today, the orchestra receives less than 25% of its funding from public sources and has an administrative team of more than 35 professionals.
From the very beginning, they resolved the supposed contradiction between artistic vision and business vision. Schmitt explains that the driving force behind every decision was the artistic vision, pursued in the fullest and most exciting way possible. This constant tension between artistic minds leading a business inspired them to launch, in 1999, the famous “5 Seconds Model”: a holistic philosophy of excellence developed specifically with the orchestra. “Five seconds” represents the smallest interval between two notes on a scale. This sound, which depending on its use can be perceived either as dissonant or melodically progressive, became a metaphor for a state of tension capable of leading groups towards excellence.
Yet their entrepreneurial spirit took them even further. What did they need to do in order to continue elevating their artistic capacity? How far could these entrepreneurial musicians go? Their answer was to connect directly with the heart of their community.
In 2007, they decided to move to Osterholz-Tenever, a neighbourhood facing major social challenges, where 80% of the population is under the age of 25. The orchestra chose not merely to visit educational institutions, but to live inside one. They exchanged the traditional concert hall for the Gesamtschule Bremen-Ost secondary school, where they coexist with 1,300 students from 90 different countries. Musicians visited classrooms to share their experiences, while classes visited the orchestra for different collaborative projects. It is a day-to-day coexistence, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to have a world-class orchestra inside a school.
Their first premise was to build this relationship without any predefined intention and to listen to the community. According to Schmitt, by giving up a specific purpose, all possibilities become open. This constant interaction had to be grounded in open experimentation. As a result, the orchestra opened itself completely to the community: its concerts, rehearsals, and the creative and entrepreneurial capacities of its musicians. Faced with these new challenges, they recognised that such interventions required more than instrumentalists and composers, and they therefore formed a new team including psychologists, social pedagogues, parents, and police officers.
By understanding the environment surrounding them, they realised that the most important thing they could offer was not music, but trust. For people who have experienced violence, rejection, or abuse, the greatest opportunity is to provide them with a positive and lasting relationship. The social project was therefore based on transforming the mindset of its participants, helping them gain control over their own lives. Not through educational concerts or music lessons, but simply through an orchestra that has remained present in the neighbourhood every day for 17 years, with its doors open.
Although music was not the starting point, it is still an extremely powerful tool. As Schmitt says, “you can close your eyes, but not your ears.” Their success has come from grounding their social programme in the intrinsic motivation of participants, activating the willingness and agency of the community itself. The orchestra continuously sends the message: “We are not here to teach you music; we want to get to know you, we want to see you.”
Of course, artistic collaborations are also part of the programme’s offerings, through projects such as Melody of Life, The Club 443 Hz, and Community Opera, where the entire community participates both on and off the stage, side by side with the orchestra’s musicians.
This high level of social responsibility has been praised by different organisations, and the success of its community impact has been documented in various studies. Yet this has not come at the expense of artistic growth. Together with Paavo Järvi, the orchestra’s principal conductor for the past 20 years, the ensemble continuously undertakes ambitious artistic challenges while maintaining its world-class excellence. In 2023, it received the “Orchestra of the Year” award at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards.
