Bernhard Ritschard is a peripatetic, polyglot violin maker of the traditional Italian school. Born in Interlaken at the foot of the Swiss Alps, he learned his craft at the tradition-rich International School of Violin Making in Cremona, following in the footsteps of Antoni Stradivari. In his northern German workshop near Lübeck, Bernhard creates and restores repertoire-specific […]
The HFBK-Chor is a choir consisting of a collection of rugged individualists who are graduates from the visual arts, design and architecture faculties of Hamburg’s most respected Fine Arts Institution the Hochschule für bildende Künste. In reality, it’s been a few semesters since most of the singers graced the halls of that august institution but that’s […]
The talented peeps at Hamburg’s Music Highschool (Jugendmusikschule) are not only inspirational music teachers and music makers, they know how to throw a party. In this case a kind of cross-cultural hands-across-the-ocean kinda party.
The multi-talented Stintje Hüllsiek is the brains behind a language school with a difference; der kleine Sprachsalon (the little language salon) was conceived by the languages and theatre specialist while on a break from full-time teaching. At the kleine Sprachsalon, students enjoy the benefit of Oxbridge style tutorial sessions in groups of between 3 and 6 learners in a […]
The Mädchenchor Hamburg (Hamburg Girls’ Choir) is a choral school for girls between the ages of 4 and 20 years old. Since 2003 the choir has enthralled audiences from Switzerland to Swaziland with their nuanced sound and polished performance style. Maedchenchor Hamburg have now served up a slice of their unique sound to CD: Song of Hope presents […]
Dingodabulous and his mates Crocoriffic and Goannagogo reveal the magical world of Urbanimaland, a place that exists in the cracks of the big city where, unseen by adult eyes, the Urbanimals dance, make magic, art & music. A funny, silly set of rhyming verses with collage illustrations and adventurous language for readers between 5 and […]
Someone, somewhere, once said that we become the books that we read. So, if we read happy books, we get happy, right? Well, now you can experiment on yourself with the nicely produced volume Was Mein Leben Reicher Macht from Knaur Verlag. These collected musings of Die Zeit reading Germans are now available in hardback […]
For the good folks at The Local, I can’t thank you enough that you’ve featured my blog of letters, from Hamburg, called (appropriately enough) ‘Letters from Hamburg‘, twice in the last little while in the Ex-Pat Dispatches column…
This year’s 2016 Calendar features Mysterious Heads with Alba’s Zany Instagram Squares inside them. Available print on demand on white (with or without photos) or on blue. A lot of the time while I was making this collage illustration I was listening to Otherppl, Brad Listi’s brilliant podcast about writers and writing. I was thinking a lot about […]
Here at Alba’s Empire we understand how tiring it is being fresh, original and above all authentic. So, we’ve taken the think out of “thinking-woman’s-crumpet” so you don’t have to. The result is “The Daily Cliché” a series of mass-produced, one-size-fits-all artworks. Never look slightly to the left of someone’s eyes at a party again […]