The position of executive director of Ensemble Musikfabrik is a complex task. It requires a good balance between internal work within the ensemble and external responsibility for building sustainable relationships: with the audience, with sponsors, and with the ever-changing world of event organizers, festivals, curators, and producers.
It is undoubtedly an exciting task that involves significant risk. New music lives with the constant possibility of failure. Ensemble Musikfabrik knows failure. Our work repeatedly gives rise to flaming failures—small and large, visible and hidden—without any intention on our part.

Some have left clear traces, others were forgotten the very next day. Although failure hurts and leaves scars, many of us would say that it is precisely these experiences that have ultimately made us successful and strong. Nevertheless, the question remains: how often are we allowed to fail? How big can the pyre of failure become?

Dear Thomas,
You joined us twice at moments when the ensemble was in the midst of asking these questions. The first time was in 2001: on March 6, 2000, we both played together with the Ensemble Modern in a performance of The Threepenny Opera conducted by HK Gruber at the Konzerthaus Berlin. During the intermission, we sat at the cafeteria bar with a large cup of bad filter coffee and talked longer than usual. I wanted to understand how you were doing after taking over as interim managing director of Ensemble Modern for a while—with the intention, of course, of sparking your interest in Ensemble Musikfabrik. You didn’t say anything definite at the time. Still, I could sense your interest clearly enough that I immediately informed our board members from that period—Thomas Oesterdiekhoff and Ulrich Löffler. Thomas and Uli had been the driving forces behind the ensemble for many years. Both of them met with you several times afterward and succeeded in winning you over for the ensemble. On February 17, 2001, you signed the contract. Shortly thereafter, on March 3, we performed a concert celebrating the tenth anniversary of musikFabrik for the Deutschlandfunk broadcast.

We received the following birthday wishes:
I send you my very best regards and wishes on your anniversary—unfortunately, I cannot attend the big celebration in person (schedule conflicts, as usual…). I was delighted to hear that Thomas Fichter will be leading you into the future—this is truly a good omen, for not only is he a particularly fine fellow, but also a responsible artist who can “stay the course” and will find a good balance between artistic and business necessities. Things can only get better from here, and I wish you all the best, many concerts, many audiences, and above all: much joy!
Hans Zender

He knew you well!
Where was the ensemble at that point? In 1997, the ensemble’s musicians took on the artistic and managerial leadership. After a long process of self-discovery, with great successes and hard lessons learned, we had a stable lineup—but a only moderately filled calendar. When you moved into the small tower next to the Orangery at Benrath Palace, you immediately realized that the concept of the Ensemble Musikfabrik was not right. The potential was many times greater than the facilities could accommodate. You didn’t spend much time in the tiny tower; instead, you thought bigger: you worked on a stable structure, looked for ways to promote the individual talents of the musicians, and created better working conditions.

One pillar of your strategy was the move to Cologne. You quickly convinced us of this idea, but I can’t quite imagine now what a feat of strength it must have been to implement this project. You also clearly foresaw that we would not be able to establish ourselves internationally as an ensemble without a concert series on a major stage. We owe our intensive collaboration with the Kunststiftung NRW to you. In close cooperation with former Minister of State Ilse Brusis, as President of the Kunststiftung NRW, Dr. Winrich Hopp, Deputy Secretary General of the Kunststiftung NRW, and Fritz Pleitgen, Director of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the Musikfabrik im WDR concert series became a reality. This was a considerable achievement, considering that we are currently preparing the 95th and 96th concert series and planning far beyond that. Our archive is impressive. Twenty-two seasons, with at least one major premiere per concert, make the zeitgeist of 21st-century music clearly audible.

At the beginning of 2004, you announced that you would be leaving your position with us. Your personal life drew you to New York City, where you initially devoted yourself to your family and later to the Earle Brown Foundation. I can hardly recall your departure at that time. It’s not your style to draw attention to yourself— and so you suddenly disappeared quietly.

Was that also an omen?

At first, it was a shock. But you left behind a stable organization. You had always involved our board chairman, Thomas Oesterdiekhoff, in decision-making processes. So it was only natural for us that he took over your position. In the years that followed, the ensemble rapidly grew to become one of the most important ensembles for New Music – culminating in the major productions KLANG (2010), SONNTAG aus LICHT (2011), and Delusion of the Fury (2013). These successes are primarily due to your defining work in the early 2000s.

It was a more gradual process the second time you came to us. After the ensemble had reached these great heights, the big question was which direction it would take next. The question of failure loomed large once again — and a pinnacle is not a good place for a pyre. In January 2015, I visited you at your home in Brooklyn. We drank some excellent coffee, I presented you with our questions, and at the same time, tried to find out where you were in your life at that moment. The ensemble was in a state of flux. We were looking for expertise— someone who could help steer change in a secure direction.
When you first visited as an advisor, you found much of the same group you had left in 2004. However, the ensemble had changed significantly: we were more experienced, more confident, and had clear ideas and expectations. At the same time, there was a great deal of uncertainty: growth demanded new impetus.

While your family life had taken you to New York in 2004, by fall 2017, your youngest son was in college—your nest was empty. We were delighted that you had the motivation and willingness to join us again. This time in a new capacity: part-time rather than full-time, with a strong focus on specific tasks. Your work had an immediate impact on the atmosphere. The new focus led to a working environment full of confidence and trust to try new things.

Together with our board of trustees, you mobilized a political lobby that significantly improved the financial conditions for our work in the city of Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Exciting years followed.

Projects you had initiated stalled due to the coronavirus. But the ensemble also saw the lockdown as a new opportunity, initiating audio streams and video productions. You immediately prioritized the revival of our studio: From 1993 to 2005, our premises were home to VIVA, Germany’s answer to MTV, whose famous motto was “at VIVA, just turn on the camera and see what happens.” That’s precisely what we did, starting on March 30, 2020—which ultimately resulted in a professional studio for livestreams and video productions, creating a unique selling point for the ensemble.

Dear Thomas, I congratulate you on your achievements. The successes are piled high before you. You are leaving us for a second time, and we can say without hesitation that Hans Zender was right when he predicted a good omen in 2001. We are very grateful to you—for your work and for what you leave behind. There is probably no one else in the New Music scene right now who understands the distance between New York and Cologne better: the many miles, the time difference, the cultural, ethical, and aesthetic differences— all of which, it seemed to us, you always bridged with remarkable ease.

Maybe now you’ll be spending more time over there again. We hope, however, that our relationship will stay strong. We look forward to following your festival TIME:SPANS — which, as Classical Voice North America writes, is “probably the only really successful contemporary festival of this magnitude in the city” — and which we consider to be by far the most important festival for new music in the USA.A good omen for art music.

To you, Thomas, we wish all the best.

Joint ventures often begin inconspicuously. Many encounters only reveal their significance in retrospect.

And yet I still have this image in my mind, as a musicology student helping out in the music archive of Ensemble Musikfabrik – in the Orangery at Benrath Palace near Düsseldorf.

The ensemble’s office: a small tower at the entrance to the palace grounds, perhaps 5 x 5 metres, with two desks downstairs and the management upstairs, accessed via a steep, almost adventurous staircase.

From my stucco-decorated archive room, I walked through the palace gardens to the tower, scrambled up the stairs, and there someone was sitting quietly in the corner. Thomas, our percussionist and interim managing director, introduced him: Thomas Fichter. He would become our artistic director. That was 25 years ago.

What a long, formative journey we were about to embark on together – I didn’t realise it at the time. And even less what it would mean for the ensemble.

The ensemble had become “small”, like this little room in the turret. Ten years after its founding with high cultural and political aspirations, after economic crisis and palace revolution, in which the musicians had taken over the artistic direction.

And sitting in the little tower is Thomas Fichter, who saw the ensemble’s potential. He had got a taste for it at Ensemble Modern as a musician and temporary managing director. And he is taking the risk of shaping us into an ensemble that represents and further develops the cultural heritage of this key formation of New Music: the soloist ensemble.
It was a moment on a knife edge: finally artistically independent, economically stable – but also just one line in the state budget.

Thomas already had 20 years of experience in ensemble culture. And the fundamental conviction that an ensemble with a sinfonietta instrumentation is indispensable: because it preserves cultural heritage and at the same time is a laboratory and platform for the further development of new music, in all its forms and styles.

Thomas’s first ‘reign’ brought this phase of de facto re-establishment to a close: anchoring in Cologne, its own concert series in partnership with the Arts Foundation, WDR and KölnMusik – and new confidence in politics.

An early highlight for me was working with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Bang on a Can composers. Not the premiere on WDR, nor the tour in Thomas’s later adopted home of New York – but the first rehearsal in the former EMI record pressing plant on Maarweg. A press conference beforehand, partition walls as stage sets, uncompromising video and sound technology.

On that day, we all sensed the high standards we could achieve. We didn’t enter a draughty, improvised factory hall – we entered a new world.

When Thomas returned to us, the ensemble had developed further on the foundation we had created together and, through major projects and institutional partnerships, had re-established itself as a force that gave new impetus to the scene. Ensemble Musikfabrik became a catalyst for the resurgence of new music in Cologne in the early 21st century.

The special quality of leadership is sometimes demonstrated by the power to say no.

What is the mission of a national ensemble for new music? An ensemble that cultivates the traditions of the 20th century in the 21st century? Yes!

An ensemble that is committed to the ever-new? Yes, too.
Are we ourselves laboratory assistants, are we our own experimental setup?

Thomas brought to this world of aesthetic, artistic and social possibilities a sense of making complex considerations – and of first saying no in order to make room for another yes. And in decisive moments, he endured the difficulty of what was important.

He formulated clear criteria and urged us to be accountable for our mission, consequences and priorities. And he listened. And allowed new directions.

We must constantly renegotiate this fruitful balancing act: being an ensemble that serves the composition, preserves, communicates and cultivates cultural heritage – while at the same time remaining a laboratory for the new and the risky, an open space – even for failure.

Thomas anchored us in our responsibility – to society, cultural policy – and reality. And in doing so, he enabled us to experiment without losing ourselves.

Thomas, soon you will no longer have to prevent us from repeating old mistakes – or discover with us that perhaps they are no longer mistakes, because the world is changing. Or because we are changing the world. But you have accompanied us for a quarter of a century and trained us for this.

Dear Thomas,

As a wanderer between two worlds (which are currently drifting apart in unexpected ways), you have guided Musikfabrik with a steady hand over the past few years, whether near or far. From the outside, that is, from my perspective, your presence was always assured, even from New York or France, and even when you were physically absent, your ability and willingness to communicate were undiminished. In other words, I was always able to talk to you and find out what I wanted, needed or should know.

We met many years ago in Donaueschingen, in the evening, after a long day of concerts, at a small summit that brought together the three Ts: you, your then successor and later predecessor Thomas Oesterdiekhoff, and me. I was very happy to be able to build on this a few years later, as a solution to the interim leadership vacuum at the time.

What makes a good artistic director? Lukas, representing the management, and Marco, representing the ensemble, will certainly be able to answer this question more competently than I can, but for supporters like me, who have been curators for a good year now, clear structures, direct lines of communication and comprehensible plans are decisive and often reassuring factors. So what is it? You don’t have to be called Thomas, but it doesn’t hurt either. Personal qualities, your qualities, can be determined by what happens inside and outside an ensemble, what happens at Musikfabrik, one of the best contemporary ensembles in the world, what is possible, what artistic path is developed, what formats are tried out, what collaborations take place, which composers write for the ensemble, where in the world Musikfabrik performances take place. The list of pieces, composers, venues and soloists that can be found in the repertoire and concert agenda speaks for itself. With Thomas Fichter, the Musikfabrik has managed to emerge alive and well from the coronavirus-induced collapse of the concert scene and, despite the still palpable consequences of this period, to remain a key player in the further development of music.

We have talked a lot about the often seemingly insufficient presence of Musikfabrik in North Rhine-Westphalia, and that too has changed. Among other things, the Musikfabrik series on WDR – thanks to the Kunststiftung NRW! – has long nurtured a spirit of innovation and a desire for a diverse repertoire, regularly presenting the ensemble in the heart of Cologne. Adventures and Composer Collider familiarise young professionals with performance practice and production methods in new music. The Monday concerts invite everyone to view the works. And the issue of generational change in the ensemble has been and continues to be handled by you with care and the highest artistic and human standards.

We regularly sat together in New York, where you live, always in January, usually when icy frost and snow brought the city to a somewhat quieter pace, in breakfast cafés, at concerts (even very bad ones, if I remember last year…), or in your beautiful flat, from which you can see the Atlantic Ocean to the west, with Europe lying somewhere beyond the horizon. In this respect, it is perhaps no wonder that our (CM, IPP and my) farewell gift has something to do with water…

In addition to your own summer festival in New York, which impressed me, the bass has remained your important companion. The instrument is always in your luggage (and also in your head), and I think that’s also what makes a good artistic director, someone who doesn’t lose his curiosity and who draws a bit of grounding from his continued engagement with his instrument.

For many conversations, for many encounters, and above all for your unconditional trust, dear Thomas, I say THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart! And it goes on. A career change at a relatively young age leaves many possibilities open… I am curious about your curiosity beyond the Musikfabrik, and I look forward to our future encounters, without the need for clarification or regulation, just for us!