What are you looking for?

Who are you and what are you doing at the moment?
My name is Markus Wentz and I have been a freelance musician and music therapist for 17 years now. As a musician, I play in various band and musical projects, accompany choirs, and occasionally have arranging and composing commissions such as for a musical or piano music on the topic of grief and comfort. As a music therapist I bring my skills as a musician into the recovery process of sick people, where improvisation and the active creation of music together with the respective people play a central role – also for my own inspiration.

What do you associate with film music and composing, what do these things mean to you?
I myself have been dealing creatively with music – composing, that is – since I started learning my instruments (piano and flute). I’ve always found that exciting: not just “playing along”, but creating music myself. My first self-taught attempts to write incidental music for a school orchestra for the performances of the theater group showed that what I heard in my imagination and what then sounded could be two very different things. Today’s technology offers great possibilities with orchestra libraries and DAWs to make your own compositions and arrangements realistically audible.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Are there artists and genres that inspire you in particular?
Of course, many genres play a role in my work today, not only “classical”, but pop/rock, electronic, jazz and improvisation. And in fact, one or another clinical improvisation (that’s what we call it) has become the nucleus of a composition. On this background, I also find people exciting who play with all genres, such as the composer-pianist Nahre Sol or Olafur Arnalds. In addition, the tremendous sound of the orchestra flashed me early on, and of course the great composers with their virtuoso orchestration techniques were role models: Tchaikovsky, of course, Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky. From these names, film composers like John Williams, John Barry, Bernard Herrmann are only a narrow film width away, so to speak 😉 .
But besides the creative aspect, the connection between music and drama(turgy) runs like a thread through my work. And not only in the field of musical/musical theater and film music, but also in therapy, where music can add a “non-verbal” level.

What do you hope to gain from the Masterclass?
The experiences that you can really only have “in real life” with a large and professional orchestra have been missing for me until now. When I learned about the Masterclass from the Internet, I naturally wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. The chance, namely, to work with a large and great orchestra under expert guidance and with professional feedback regarding my previously acquired skills and thus to expand my knowledge and develop myself further. I am very much looking forward to the encounters that are coming. And: a (childhood) dream comes true. To experience one’s own music played by a great orchestra.

Photo: Leif Dryden