Matteo Haitzmann

I grew up in a very small village in Salzburg, and it's thanks to my mother that I was allowed to take violin lessons at the age of six. My mother was lucky that her parents enabled her and her siblings to learn an instrument. She then passed that on to me and my siblings. For several years she drove one hour from our village to Salzburg city, waited an hour while I had lessons, and then drove back home with me for another hour. She did the same for my siblings. She did that for us without ever putting pressure on us – at the same time it was an incredible extra burden for her, for which I am very grateful. I myself was diligent at the beginning when it came to practice. Then, during puberty, I was rather lazy. I enjoyed it, but I simply didn't want to practice – and I think many people feel that way in that phase of life.

I don't want to miss my childhood and youth in the countryside, but it wasn't easy either, especially from the point when, at 14, 15, I began attending workshops and met people who had similar interests and who "ticked" similarly. Back then I realized that there are people very similar to me, and that feeling was crazy. Only at that moment did a kind of longing arise in me. I think that's characteristic of my artistic path: that a lot has been made possible for me, but that I also had to discover a lot myself.

Matteo Haitzmann

No, actually not. My brothers, unlike me, started folk music early. In my case, although I learned violin, it wasn't like that; it was purely classical instruction. Only later did I find an approach to it – and also recognize that musically I'm more drawn to Renaissance or Baroque music than to the classical, although my lessons in the first years were very focused on the latter. That was another discovery. In retrospect I believe that through folk music I found my way out of the classical-romantic repertoire.

Another discovery was that I wanted to continue on the path as a violinist and that my abilities as an instrumentalist are quite good in a certain area, but that I would never reach the level required to pursue a "classical" soloist career.

Matteo Haitzmann

I actually started studying violin very late, because after school I had a full-time modelling career for three years. I traveled a lot internationally, and during those years my interest in fashion and visual arts steadily grew, and many friendships formed that still accompany me today. They were important and formative years, but after that time I knew I really wanted to study violin, so I stopped modelling and at the same time began my studies at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz and founded the folk music band Alma.

Matteo Haitzmann

I mainly went to Linz because of the violinist Andi Schreiber who was teaching there at the time, because he has the great quality of allowing his students' artistic language to exist, not shaping them all according to the same pattern. Alongside studying with him I also took baroque violin lessons with the equally wonderful Michi Gaigg. But I was never a classical music student: I was always interested in many different disciplines, and from the start I was already performing a lot as a musician – with Alma, soon also with Little Rosies Kindergarten. Only when I moved from Linz to Berlin, where I was admitted to the master’s program SODA – Solo Dance and Authorship at the University of the Arts, did I decide to really study only. I remember cancelling a lot of already planned concerts at that time – but we only paused with Alma, and our ensemble still exists today. I have also remained in close contact with colleagues from Linz. For example, Judith Schwarz, the drummer in “Make it Count”, studied in Linz. We met on a Frank Zappa project, and out of that came our jazz collective Little Rosies Kindergarten, which also still exists. Of the 13 people working together here, more than half studied in Linz – for the openness of the Linz institute beyond any "jazz dogmatism" I am very grateful.

Matteo Haitzmann

We started working on it when I applied to Berlin and had to develop a ten-minute solo for that.

Matteo Haitzmann

Yes. And while my colleagues tried various things, I simply hopped for two years. I experimented with many different things, for example, mic'ing pots and looping the sounds produced by jumping live while jumping. Then there was a more staged version and between both a lot of experimentation. For a long time the percussion wasn't even there, because I was in Berlin and working alone. Then Arthur Fussy came on board, with whom Judith Schwarz works a lot. From that point on, the joint experimentation was central, and that was only possible because we could work on it for such a long time.

Matteo Haitzmann

The Academy had always been a kind of place of longing for me, a kind of counter-program to the very structured music studies. But in the end it was too much, and I completed Linz and Berlin, but ended the Vienna studies after two years.

Matteo Haitzmann

Yes, that's true. I have always been interested in performance, and since Simon Mayer had invited some friends of mine for Sons of Sissy I practically invited myself and absolutely wanted to take part in this research project, which was significantly about folk music. What emerged was a „natural“ feeling for something, in this case for dancing. I have experienced repeatedly that when you have this natural feeling, you don't question so much yet. Unfortunately that feeling is lost over time, and the more you begin to question your body and your abilities. That's actually a shame. You then start thinking that you don't have "the body" for this or that, and it becomes increasingly difficult to find or retain that initial feeling. That's one reason why in “Make it Count” – and most recently also for Im Styx baden – I chose very clear movements.

Matteo Haitzmann

This work began with Gideon Mendel's book “The Ward” from 2017, in which he published his photographs taken in 1993 in the first AIDS ward in London. That book impressed me greatly, and I wanted to create a project in the form of an artistic act of remembrance, because what developed in the 1980s and 1990s today belongs to the queer and – I say this very consciously: gay – heritage. The material I use is so accurate and so contemporary that for this project I placed great importance on precise source citations. And it was also the first piece in which I sang.

Matteo Haitzmann

We had a one-year ensemble residency at Porgy & Bess in 2021–2022, and each of us had to design an evening as part of that. In my case it was a dance concert that began exactly with that ten-minute encounter of Judith and me, jump rope and percussion. I was in the auditorium at the time, which we had completely cleared, and after the ten minutes the rest of the jazz orchestra joined us and the atmosphere in the whole hall was simply incredible. How intense this jumping, which is at the center of “Make it Count, is for everyone, for me as well as the audience, I was totally surprised by. So it was actually consistent that we continued working on it.

Another station was the 2023 opening of the wellenklænge in Lunz, where we were able to work with the magnificent singer Anja Om plus ensemble and the choir Camerata Styria; an incredible experience for all of us. That enormously long time we had for this piece is exceptional. And I will probably never experience that again in this form.

Matteo Haitzmann

Yes, it was incredible: in July I actually had a Saturday on which I performed in Salzburg in the afternoon and in the evening at ImPulsTanz – with an hour of hopping!

Matteo Haitzmann

I always think in musical forms, and since we all also come from improvised music, we all think in these patterns. “Make it Count” is like a jazz concert in which there are fixed forms and improvised ones, while you always know where you move on to, and that also applies to the light. And there is a lot of counting, which we as musicians often no longer need, it's inside us. Hanna Kritten Tangsoo, who is responsible for the lighting design, and Lukas Froschauer, who developed the sound design, are also so precisely coordinated that in retrospect it feels like a single luxury that we were allowed to realize this project in this form. We also had a long rehearsal period for Sons of Sissy – something that today no longer seems possible.

Matteo Haitzmann

That's right, I thought that then and I also thought it with Those we lost. So far it has always been a quiet, unmoving presence that suits me personally very well. Although I feel that this has changed over the course of the performances, I've changed, so I think that I have become somewhat more permeable in “Make it Count” – I can't say that yet for “Im Styx baden”.

Matteo Haitzmann

The connectedness and the bonds I have with a number of people go back to a long-ago time in my life, these deep friendships and long artistic partnerships I already mentioned. And then I also get euphoric again and again when I meet new people, like Hanna. And yet it is currently, without wanting to sound pathetic, not part of my working life. I actually have to economize my energy after the last two years without a break. Maybe it's also a generational problem, maybe we've become more sensitive – that might be the wrong word – but perhaps we've become more conscious of how to hold our bodies. I notice that in the last two years there was nothing but work. And I notice that you run the risk of losing empathy in this continuous work process. Losing empathy and social competence is also a product of this whirlwind into which one is thrown and cannot escape, I keep reminding myself of that. That's why “Those we lost” was such an important experience for me, because it's centrally about empathy and understanding. In “Make it Count” the focus was on endurance. That allowed audience members who aren't very familiar with dance or music to latch on to that endurance and feel something like empathy. In “Im Styx baden” it's precisely this loneliness and loss from which I create a musical monologue. I believe that this sense of being lost, which in a way is based on overload, is something many of us know and can use as a starting point for work.

Matteo Haitzmann

As an artist I dread portraying something I am not. You might be something else, but it's an incredibly narrow ridge you walk on to avoid slipping into the patterns you see again and again. So I've developed strategies to bring my body into this non-judgmental place, and that is, for example, hopping, although it doesn't necessarily have to be the hopping from “Make it Count”, it could also be shaking. If I notice I'm losing the connection to myself, that helps me to clear my head and carry on.

What is very important to me: to find a language that doesn't stress you. And at the same time to find a level that is not below something you yourself would want to consume. And unfortunately I am obsessed with virtuosity, which fascinates me. That means I don't need to bring that virtuosity to everything – but then in something else.