Maximilian FuhrigDigital PORTFOLIO

Roger Vignoles PianistAldeburgh Festival

CONTENT

. Introduction. Digital. Writing

. Photography. Video. Design. Brand

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Iain Paterson Bass - Baritone London

Classical 2.0Telling our story INTRODUCTION

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This is a very exciting time to be in the arts.

Everything around us is shifting.

Technology has changed our lives, the way we work and how we communicate. We have changed the way we consume and entertain, and our community is now global.

But whatever the change, we seek a higher calling in art. And the more we look, we find truth beyond the changing of the tides.

We have to preserve this truth, but communicate with change.

If we do not, we end up speaking a different language.

I believe the key is to tell our story.

A rich and meaningful story, told in a place where everyone can listen, by those, and to those of our time, in the language we have grown accustomed to speak.

It means to produce innovative communication strategies elevating the traditional work of the artist.

To amplify the live experience by transforming the way we communicate beyond the performance platform.

To dedicate our resources to new media, making extensive use of online communications, social media, photography and video to produce highly creative and unique user content.

In order to be the best communicator we have to strive to be the most innovative.

This is my portfolio, and this is my story.

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Going DIGITAL

Todays artists need to be visible online.

People love to see what it means to be an artist. They want to be able to be part of the story.

Now we have all these great tools to make it happen. Artists are able to share the entire process.And tell a great story.

I created maximilianvanlondon.com as a blog to be a digital centrepiece for all my digital communication as a classical artist and to tell my story.

In the end, it evolved into a vibrant document of the many musicians working in classical music today.

And so it became everyone’s story.

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Wayne Weaver Organist Edinburgh

When the blog went online, everyone loved the style. People loved to see these artists in their every day lives, and read their stories.

Receiving extensive coverage as a new classical music blog, I was able to feature up and coming musicians as well as professionals such as Roger Vignoles, Iain Paterson, Erwin Schrott, Roberto Alagna or Elina Garanca.

I combined portrait photography with newly popular forms of ‘street style’ blogging to create a unique platform for artists online.

Our tagline was ‘Art is Style’!

9www.maximilianvanlondon.com 12 Feb 2011

Looking at the artists around me, I realised they were all redefining what being a classical musician meant to them today.

Now everyone is growing up with Facebook. Colleagues sing Handel and listen to Kanye.

They go to the Met and end up partying in Brooklyn.

So I got to write about all that.

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WRITING the stories

I spent the end of April going to New York to work. When you are at this stage it is best to follow those you trust the most and not to wait for opportunities to come your way. It is what I had to learn and something I have always found to be challenging. When you always head out into the world, how do you know where to find home? And then when you are always restless, who will want to find rest with you. Where will you find your peace?I met great company, acquaintances, mentors, role models, and a bit of New York. I have never been much of a visitor, rather I want to live in the places I visit. I feel uncomfortable easily and I don’t really like being watched. Then again I can’t get enough of it. I’ve always been funny like that. I ended up staying with Jimmy and David, and David is a fine young Tenor and he was preparing to sing Nemorino and together we discussed all the great singers. I was fortunate also to meet Wallis Giunta at the Met, a member of the Lindeman Young Artist Programme. We said hello in front of Lincoln Center, bathed in beautiful sunlight, after I had catched a recital of hers the previous day. She was out of a rehearsal, about to jump into a masterclass with Maestro Levine, before singing in Rigoletto that same evening. Those jobs don’t come easy. She told me how the programme had allowed her much freedom to do the things she valued most, like singing with Canadian Opera for three months last season.I gatecrashed two parties on that Saturday with David, one in Downtown and the other in Brooklyn somewhere. And then I headed back to Lincoln Center to catch the first half of that night’s Rigoletto and it was there that I heard Wallis Giunta for the second time, but now it was like her house debut or so it said on the posters and she is the first to seduce the duke and she sang with such an air of class and a commanding stage presence already.On the Sunday we ended up going to the church of St Ignatius of Antioch on 87th Street. My Anglo Catholicism is a little rusty, but there I was, in the middle of the Upper Westside, listening to Tallis and Buxtehude. I told David how much it moved me and how listening to Buxtehude always reminds me that Bach went out of his way to walk half across Germany in order to listen to him play. And I guess I had flown across the Atlantic to listen to my mentor sing and for him to listen to me. By that afternoon I had been from Harlem to the Upper Westside, from there to Columbia University where we heard a school band play the brassiest rendition of Carmina, following steak and eggs for Brunch. And then I was back to midtown to see some more friends I had not met before, play in a video shoot for their band and for me to take pictures although I was over an hour late. Before I knew it I had shot Zap and the Naturals in a yet to be opened bar on 23rd Street and it was all Rock’n Roll although we had saxophones and there was a tuba I think. On my way home I wandered through Times Square and it struck me yet again, the sheer size of it all and how I had been fortunate to meet everyone I did and how kind New York had been to me.On my last day we headed to the flower market early in the morning where we bought flowers for a birthday party or something and so it was that I ended up carrying flowers through Manhattan. Not only was David an opera singer, but he knew all about flowers.Before I left New York, it was rainy like it had not rained at all for my stay, and I nipped into a diner on 7th Avenue following a long walk through Central Park and down Literary Walk, and I overheard an old Spanish gentleman telling two German tourists as they left how he remembered his stay in Hamburg like it was yesterday, it had been back in 1946, he must have been US army, and he looked so old and frail, but with an air of elegance and then he told them how he will never forget the Ambassador Club.I looked outside onto 7th and I saw the gentleman as he wondered through the drizzle and I thought that here, the ones that make dreams are not the dreamers.And I slept on the plane and the following day I woke up in London and it was on that same day that I became an uncle.

THURSDAY, 2 MAY 2013

The ones that make dreamsWith Tenor David Wahrmund in New York

11www.maximilianvanlondon.com 2 May 2013

With time, I got to know a lot of artists.

So I got to take a lot of pictures.

I have shot portraits for hundreds of classical musicians and have photographed for all the major Classical Music Agencies such as Intermusica, Askonas or Harrison Parrott.

Most recently an editorial of Iain Paterson was printed in ‘Das Opernglas’ Magazine (Aug 2015).

I realised, looking through the lense, I have this unique chance to get to know the real people and characters who make music.

Those pictures already tell most of the story.

PHOTOGRAPHY

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VIDEO storyThe web is already full of moving pictures.

We can actually all tell our stories through videos. Its easy.

Bel Canto Bella Voce is a short blog documentary about a master class series run by American musicians in Vienna.I filmed it while participating on the course.

In Gute Nacht A Soho Story I set out to create a new form of telling an oldstory. Putting Schubert’s Winterreise into todays streets of Soho in London. That got a lot of people very excited.

This is actually the best time to be making films for classical music. We have the resources.

And so now we can share any story.

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link: Bel Canto Bella Voce

link: Gute Nacht A Soho Story

DESIGN brings contextWith all this material, we have the opportunity to bring it all together and create a great product.

And I am passionate about bringing together the entire creative process from conceptualisation to final product.

I have designed various CD Covers, Website artwork, as well as Posters and Publicity material.

Now we have enabled the artists to tell their story not just when making music.

They have become part of a bigger creative process.

And together we have initiated a new type of conversation.

Album Cover production ‘Arie Antiche’ 2013Chanda VanderHart and Rusaloma Mochukova

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A digital conversation, where everyone shares their creative output online.

Websites, Social Media, Blogs, Youtube etc. Here everyone can interact.

It is by way of curating content that we have become modern storytellers.

Website Build www.maximilianfuhrig.com

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Website artwork concepts Kathryn Walker

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Olivia Jageurs Harpist London

Now that we are tellling all these great stories, we realise we have ended up with a very different type of artist.

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An artist, who is in fact quite like his audience.

An artist who speaks as a whole,

tells stories which inspire,

creates conversations which last over time,

who makes authentic art.

He speaks a languageeveryone understands.

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Pablo Strong TenorLondon

All for the BRANDIn the end, the best stories and the best content creates the strongest communication.

A consistent strategy maximises exposure beyond the performance platform and provides the foundation for a strong brand identity.

There is nothing greater than the power of this brand when it comes to selling all things classical music.

Nothing speaks louder and lasts longer than the sum of these stories resonating for all to hear.

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Christian Miedel TenorMunich

Would you like to tell your story?

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Maximilian FuhrigJanuary 2016

4568 Heatherbrook DrTroy, MI 48098

+1 (248) 971 - 5228maximilian_fuhrig@hotmail.com

linkedin.com/in/maximilianfuhrig