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In the first episode of season two we talk to Julien Chavaz, Generalintendant and Operndirektor of Theater Magdeburg and, from 2028/29, Intendant of the Aalto-Theater and the Essener Philharmoniker.He was in Seoul, directing Peter Grimes for Korea National Opera, when the phone call about Essen came. This is a conversation about the journey that made that call possible: the agricultural sciences degree before the dramaturgy, the years assisting across Europe, the small company in Fribourg, and what changes when you take on a house of 440 people where many of them are better than you at their own job.He discussed what an Intendant should do when he arrives at a theatre and how to respect his predecessors work and decisions. In his words "you arrive at a house that existed 150 years before you and will exist 150 years after, and your job is to pass the torch on".It is also about what a theatre owes the city around it. Football chants on the opera house steps, a play built from the rise of a band out of a Sachsen-Anhalt village, the Wintermärchen that carries the financial year. Julien Chavaz talks about his craft. What opera directing physically is — standing in front of sixty people and making an idea land with your arms and your face. How much a story can be told without text, with Tatiana's letter scene in Tchaikovsky’s famous opera Eugene Onegin as the worked example. Why he designs from colour and rings his costume designer before anyone else. And the economics behind it: what commissioning a new opera actually costs in years, why co-production is the method he will carry into Essen, and why a chorus contract is often a better living than a solo career.On 20 December 2024 he was at an opera in Madrid when a car was driven into the Magdeburg Christmas market; he describes the interval, the missed calls, and the flight the next morning. The theatre went on to commission Wunde Stadt, a play about the attack, and he sets out the argument for making work from an event rather than staying silent about it.And then the election. Two weeks before this recording Sachsen-Anhalt voted, and he talks about what he expects: not open censorship, which would be unconstitutional, but interference — and his own question to anyone proposing to restrict artistic freedom and what a theatre may show, which is who exactly they imagine will come and stage it.

The first season of the Enchoris podcast features an eclectic set of guests and we explore how the cultural and creative sectors can face the challenges of society rapidly changing.Enchoris Podcast | S1E12 | Ines Rainer — project leader, CREATIVE.NRWEnchoris Podcast | S1E11 | Thomas Venker — publisher and co-editor-in-chief, Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & PopEnchoris Podcast | S1E10 | Robert Douglass — founder, Open Goldberg Variations Project and SpecKittyEnchoris Podcast | S1E09 | Jürgen Enninger — head of the Jutierhalle project, MunichEnchoris Podcast | S1E08 | Valentina Obando Jaramillo — Televisor Troika, SEE THE SOUNDEnchoris Podcast | S1E07 | Matthias Hornschuh — composer, Initiative Urheberrecht and GEMAEnchoris Podcast | S1E06 | Ralph H. Christoph — director, c/o pop conventionEnchoris Podcast | S1E05 | Michael P. Aust — co-founder and director, SoundTrack_CologneEnchoris Podcast | S1E04 | Josef Fuchs — coach, Jokifu CoachingEnchoris Podcast | S1E03 | Jan Lankisch — curator, Weekend Fest and Weekend RecordsEnchoris Podcast | S1E02 | Barbara Volkwein — founder and artistic director, Groove SymphonyEnchoris Podcast | S1E01 | Christof Schreckenberg — CEO, Feldstärken and Creative TideThe Enchoris Podcast is hosted by Elias Ntais and produced by Jorgos Katsimitsoulias. Mixed and Recorded by Nick Benoy at River Studios in Cologne.Read more at: https://enchoris.eu/podcasts

Ines Rainer is a project leader at CREATIVE.NRW, the creative-industries cluster for North Rhine-Westphalia. She trained as a communication designer, grew up in her father's shoemaking workshop, and co-founded a food-sharing platform. Her work puts creative people in rooms with companies that have run out of ideas — and she is direct about where startup funding actually goes.

In the eleventh episode of the Enchoris Podcast we talk to Thomas Venker — publisher and co-editor-in-chief of Kaput, a magazine whose subtitle has read "for insolvency and pop" for ten years, and before that editor-in-chief of Intro, at the time Germany's largest music magazine.In May 2026 Kaput did something the industry had stopped doing: it published a printed issue. This is a conversation about why, and about what music journalism costs the people who make it. We talk about writing as a form of expression and how different people have different writing styles. Sometimes 30000 characters are need to tell the whole story.We discuss his latest book 'Talking to Americans' that was published by Edition Fieber. A journey through the United States with photographer and friend Jonathan Forsyte. They embarked on a road trip randomly interviewing people who shared their life-stories and views.https://edition-fieber.com/We talk about the Kapute Szene art space he runs in Cologne that tried to create a community space where art and music meet. Creating a setting for the art and music audiences to fuse and mingle. He was co-curator of the Monheim Triennale, the avant-garde music festival on the Rhine whose artistic director is Reiner Michalke. After a very successful run and the 2025 edition being a peaking point the Triennale was effectively terminated. The town's newly elected administration had no interest in that form of culture, so there was no longer room for a festival of avant-garde music. We discuss how a festival like that can change a small city and provide a worldview to the local youth while giving artists room to collaborate and evolve.https://monheim-triennale.de/What does a magazine owe a scene? What disappears when the writing about music disappears? And how much unpaid administrative work now stands between a talented musician and the funding they need?More from Thomas at Kaput Magazin https://kaput-mag.com/team

In the tenth episode of the Enchoris Podcast, we talk to Robert Douglass—a former professional French horn player turned software engineer, the founder of the Open Goldberg Variations Project, and now the developer of an open-source, spec-driven AI framework called SpecKitty.The episode turns on the idea that music, written language, and computer code are all text, which is why a large language model can move between them at all. From there, the argument is that a model only interpolates between things it has already seen, so the human contribution is the specification—the taste, the frame, and the opinion that decide which of the infinite in-between options to produce.We follow his journey from music to coding and discuss the skill set musicians develop on their way to mastery. We discuss why so many musicians have become coders over the past 30 years and try to find the bridge between reading scores and coding. How does crowdfunding the Open Goldberg Variations Project translate into community-driven development, and how does AI change human collaboration and software development?Is an AI-generated song art just because it creates a communal experience? We debate the nature of AI-generated content and explore the value of spec-driven development.Check out Robert Douglass at https://spec-kitty.ai/about

In the ninth episode of the Enchoris Podcast we discuss the role of Culture and Sports in city development and their importance for the identity building of a city.Our guest Jürgen Enninger has served as Deputy Mayor for Culture, World Heritage and Sport in the City of Augsburg. Before that he led the Competence Team for Cultural and Creative Industries in the City of Munich and the Bavarian Regional Office of the Federal Competence Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (RKW). Starting August 2026 be the project leader of the Jutierhalle in Münich.Jürgen sees the cultural associations and the sport associations as the DNA of a city.What really drives him is to support and empower the people in the creative sector to become more self-confident within the economical discussion discourse. 

In the eighth episode of the Enchoris Podcast we discuss the challenges of festival programming and curation in an age of social media consumption and content oversaturation. Our guest Valentina Obando Jaramillo, is the main curator and program manager of the SEE THE SOUND Film Festival in Cologne, that runs parallel to  @soundtrack_cologne7971  What does it mean to curate a festival in a time when streaming platforms, short attention spans, and social media algorithms are changing how people find and watch films?How do you choose films that are not only relevant, but also creative and entertaining for an audience that includes both professionals and music lovers? The conversation also dives into the challenges facing filmmakers and composers today—from funding and festival curation to artificial intelligence, copyright, licensing, and the changing landscape of the creative industries. They explore why human creativity remains irreplaceable despite rapid technological advances.The episode highlights standout films from this year's festival, discusses diversity in filmmaking, and reflects on the importance of preserving music documentaries as part of our cultural heritage.Whether you're a filmmaker, composer, musician, or simply passionate about music and cinema, this episode offers an insightful look behind the scenes of one of Europe's most respected festivals.You can check out the schedules of both festivals at their respective websites:SEE THE SOUND - 15. Juli - 19. Juli 2026https://seethesound.de/SoundTrack_Cologne 23 - July 14 - July 17, 2026https://soundtrackcologne.de/

In the seventh episode of the Enchoris Podcast we discuss the hidden dangers of the use of generative Al in creative content creation and their implications on artists' work, rights and intellectual property. Our guest Matthias Hornschuh is a film and media composer, musicologist, author, lecturer, spokesperson of the german authors' rights initiative - Initiative Urheberrecht, a member of the supervisory board of GEMA and one of the co-founders of the Soundtrack Cologne Festival.Are we giving ourselves up? That is the title of the book our guest Matthias Hornschuh wrote about the effect Artificial Intelligence has on humanity. On this episode we talk about the thought process that went into the book and the personal journey to finalising it. A book that is more about the human creative process and less about the evangelised benefits of AI.Matthias Hornschuh official Websitehttps://hornschuh-musik.de/Matthias is the author of the essay "We give ourselves up" (Wir geben uns auf - KI, Kultur und die Entwertung der Wissensarbeit), published by Carl-Auer Verlag.

What makes the arts sustainable? This months guest Ralph Christoph, the director of the c/o pop convention shares his views on how the current political climate will effect the founding of the arts and specifically pop music. What kind of structures are needed in order to navigate a political agenda that does not include diversity and focused on the misconception that pop music is a self sustaining profit oriented industry. We talk about how much work and thought goes into both understanding different segments and age groups of stakeholders and guests of the festival. He gives us insight on the ground work done behind the scenes to ensure that the event is relevant, educating and entertaining for a diverse audience. In the process we talk about how trends come into fashion and go and how the narratives, business models, challenges and approaches adjust to that. We go through how the business models of the pop and performing industries have changed over the years between recording and touring the current dead-end situation due to inflation and exploding touring costs. How will this fragile biotope of music survive the current financial situation, the closed borders and the wars happening around Europe.Additionally Ralph Christoph is giving us insight on the panel that will discuss how radical pop music could be in the next years if it follows other art-forms breaking norms and having an edge. A healthy reaction to the extreme right propaganda that is taking the internet by storm. How can pop music affect the current political climate as a form of aesthetic resistance and what is the soundtrack of the years to come. This years convention will explore exactly that! More information on this years co pop convention on April 16 -17 in Cologne Germany https://c-o-pop.de/programm#convention