Klaus Peter Samson

Klaus Peter Samson (born April 17, 1943 in Elbing ) is a German singer (tenor), singing teacher , cultural manager and founder of the Hamburg Academy of Singers.

Life

childhood and education

Klaus Peter Samson was born in Elbing as the son of a postal clerk and an administrative clerk and grew up in Lübeck after fleeing Poland. Samson took lessons at the Johanneum, where he developed his musical skills and performed as a boy soprano. From then on he was used for solo tasks (1st boy in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Lübeck City Theater). In 1956 he moved with his parents to Hamburg-Bergedorf and, at the request of his parents, completed a commercial apprenticeship before studying music. Maja Stein paved the way for him so that in 1965 he could begin to study singing at the Hamburg Conservatory, which he continued in 1969 with Josef Traxel at the Stuttgart Conservatory . Samson passed the opera maturity test with Kammersänger Wolfgang Windgassen . After he completed his studies with the artist diploma exam in 1972 at the music school, he appeared as Antonio in Liebesverbot of Richard Wagner at the International Youth Festival meeting in Bayreuth in 1973 as a dance master and Scaramuccio in the Richard Strauss -opera Ariadne auf Naxos at the Municipal Theater in Trier. Above all, however, he appeared as a concert singer.

Activities at the German Music Council and the German Phono Academy

The President of the German Music Council , Siegfried Borris , brought Samson to Bonn-Bad Godesberg as Deputy Secretary General. Here he became the successor of Roland Scholl, the long-time chancellor at the University of Music and Theater in Hanover. At the same time he received teaching positions for singing at the EWH Koblenz and the University of Bonn.

In 1977 Samson became Secretary General of the German Phono Academy in Hamburg. In order to raise public awareness of the idea of ​​“cultural carrier record”, he organized the “German Pop Young Talent Festival” in the Stadttheater Würzburg in cooperation with the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation , the German Record Prize (now Echo) at the Wiesbaden International May Festival and in conjunction with the Hamburg University of Music and Theater numerous international specialist conferences, for example jazz in the media or the desire and reality of promoting young talent in popular music .

Following an initiative by the GEMA President and Chairman of the Working Group for Promoting Talent in Popular Music, Munich, Erich Schulze , a “popular music model experiment” (now “ Pop Course ”) was started in Hamburg, in which Samson worked as a lecturer and deputy project manager with developed and advocated in the ministries of culture and education that popular music could be integrated into the education system. A resolution of the General Assembly of the German Music Council initiated by him supported this project. A jazz course at the University of Music and Theater and the pop course as a contact course for popular music have now become permanent institutions.

Worked at the Hamburg Conservatory and the Singer Academy

From 1983 onwards, Samson was the successor of Peter Hartmann as director of the Hamburg Conservatory. He gave the conservatory a new structure, established permanent positions and was able to achieve that the cultural authority linked the employee contracts to the BAT and tripled the subsidies to € 600,000 in a short time. From 1983 to 1989 he was deputy Chairman of the DML examination board at the conservatoire. In cooperation with the NDR, the Deutsche Phono-Akademie eV and the cultural authority, he organized the Hamburg “Hörfest” to promote the next generation of pop musicians, set up his own pop music department and organized regular concerts at home and abroad with the “Hamburg Vocalists” he founded .

In 1990, with the support of the Hamburg entrepreneur Gerhard Frei, he founded the Singer Academy Hamburg, a private training institute for amateur and professional singers. The aim of this institution is to supplement the music college with corresponding courses of study to train professional choir singers and, since 1999, also to train pop singers. After the training was classified as equivalent to that of the Musikhochschule by an expert opinion from the Musikhochschule, the Singer Academy, which operates on a non-profit basis, was awarded state recognition. The Central Evaluation and Accreditation Agency ) confirmed in 2011 that the program concepts for popular music, singing and professional choir singing meet the requirements of the bachelor's degree. Samson organized competitions to promote young talent in the field of popular music, initially the tuning meeting with the NDR, Hamburg-Welle (90.3), the German Phono Academy, now the Songlive Creativ Pop competition in conjunction with the Hamburg local broadcaster TIDE TV / TIDE Radio 96 , 0 NET, the Hamburger Wochenblatt and the Franz Grothe Foundation.

In 2015, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Singer Academy Hamburg, Klaus Peter Samson was honored with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to the education and safeguarding of musical culture in Germany .

Footnotes

1. ↑ Klaus Peter Samson awarded the Federal Cross of Merit , accessed on July 5, 2015.

Web links

• Singer Academy Hamburg
• Article in the WORLD