Michael Herrmann
| Michael Herrmann | |
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The founder of the Rheingau Musik Festival at Eberbach Abbey, 23 August 2011
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| Born |
4 February 1944 Wiesbaden, Germany |
| Occupation | culture and music administrator |
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Michael Herrmann (born 4 February 1944 in Wiesbaden) is a German culture and music administrator. He founded the Rheingau Musik Festival in 1987 and is its Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer.
When Herrmann announced in 2011 the first concert of the Rheingau Musik Festival's annual composer's portrait, featuring Hans Zender, he recalled that he was an altar boy at the church in Wiesbaden where Zender was the organist. In the 1960s, Herrmann attended the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades three times. Meeting important chamber musicians there, later singing in choral concerts in Eberbach Abbey in the early 1970s, inspired the idea of a music festival in the Rheingau.
Herrmann, who first learned bookselling, turned to tourism and worked in the Canary Islands for ten years. He met Christoph Eschenbach, Justus Frantz, Jürgen Ponto, Helmut Schmidt, Will Quadflieg and Leonard Bernstein. He returned to Germany in 1982 and worked for concert agencies. In 1985 he founded his own artists and concert agency.
He founded the Rheingau Musik Festival and, together with Tatiana von Metternich, Walter Fink and others, created in 1987 the Rheingau Musik Festival e.V. as an association which ran the festival until 1992, and has continued to support the festival. In 2010, it had 3300 members. Herrmann won sponsors who choose to fund their own concerts. It is normal for him to contact three to four sponsors a day. 180 companies have sponsored the festival. About half of the budget is funded by the sponsors and the remainder by ticket sales. Herrmann was successful in keeping the festival independent of public funding, but the minister-president of Hesse is its patron. Since 1992 the festival has been run by a GmbH (company with limited liability), with Herrmann as partner and managing director (Gesellschafter und Geschäftsführer). The festival has grown from 19 concerts in the two months of the first season to an average of 150 events each season, many of them in the Rheingau's vineyards and historical buildings, making the festival "one of the largest in Europe". Herrmann made the festival a member of the European Festivals Association and serves as the association's vice president.
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