"The magic sound is the balance between music, voice & personality."

Interview of Olga Popova, scholar at Schauspielhaus Graz, with the composers of the music to Lilly Sykes "Cactus Land"

Probably every director knows how important music is for a performance as it is always that missing piece to create magic that puts the audience into the certain atmosphere or emotional state. During my scholarship and assisting on the production of “Cactus Land” directed by Lilly Sykes I have met the music that I, as a director, fell in love with.

Here is a small interview with Maren Montauk and David Schwartz that have created the music for the performance.

In Cactus Land, directed by Lily Sykes, we worked with a female choir. It became a exciting challange and a big opportunity for us at the same time. Music by many voices sounds very special and deep, but of course first you have to know the voices with its people behind. Then you find a unique soundorchestra. The magic sound is the balance between music, voice & personality.

Scene from "Cactus Land" by Lilly Sykes / Photo by Lupi Spuma

How many pieces of music have you and David created and can you describe with a few words some of them?

David Schwarz und Maren Kessler created together almost 50 Popsongs for our Projekt "Maren Montauk" (OAK, electrorot & Peace Songs), a lot of film music (Reise zum Mars), theatre music (cactus land), performances (RAUCH, O.P.I.U.M ) and we wrote our first music theatre play "From Room To Room I" & "From Room To Room II". They are all our babies and every song & piece has its own charme, its own identity, its fitting spot in time and space.

David and me we like to work with different artists, different energies (Mr.Bugslow & schwarzunschmitz) and also work, perform and compose solo pieces on our own.
Generally: a piece is made out of its material, setting and its proper outcome.

Photo by Sophie Schwarz

Could you also say a few words about your project “Maren Montauk”?

Maren Montauk is a fictional charakter invented by Maren Kessler to produce, sing & perform extraordinary pop music: mainly in collaboration with David Schwarz (co-composer/arranger/pianist). The concept of Maren Montauk: music & art is defined by the right setting. Always on the search for new sounds, Maren Montauk works & breath continuously with different musicians forming new and and exciting collaborations, including the Peace Song Projekt, Maren Montauk band, electrorot and OAK. In addition Maren Montauk composed soundtracks for film (“Journey to Mars”, direction: Sebastian Binder).
In 2014 Maren Montauk staged her first musical performance play, From Room To Room I, combining music from OAK & electrorot with elements of composed theatre and audience participation. In october 2015 From Room To Room II has premiered in Berlin.