Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin · from 1990 · Founder & director
Café Global
Café Global was never a concert with fixed seating and a set order of applause. It was a place: tables, drinks, music from countries most of the audience knew only from the news — and the chance to talk to the musicians afterwards.
I founded the series at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and ran it for years. The principle was simple and difficult at once: every evening had to work on its own — for someone looking for exactly this music, and for someone who wandered in by chance and had never heard of it.
That takes more than a good line-up. It takes a dramaturgy that explains without lecturing: hosting that places the music in context instead of holding a seminar, a room that allows conversation, and a running order in which an unfamiliar sound is not served up as an exotic curiosity but as what it is — music that means something to someone.
Café Global is the format everything else grew out of. Whoever books a programme from me is, at heart, booking that attitude: respect for what goes on stage, and curiosity about the people sitting in front of it.
My role
- Founding and running the series at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt
- Selecting and negotiating with ensembles, season after season
- Dramaturgy of the single evening: order, breaks, hosting
- Building an audience that comes back — not just for a name, but for the series
- Concert series
- Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin · from 1990 · Founder & director
Further along the band
All eight programmes
Next step
Shall we build something like this together?
Tell me in three steps what you have in mind — format, setting, date. I get back to you personally.