INTERVIEW
When and where did you first see the MCO in concert? It was at Konzerthaus Berlin in November 2001, a concert with Mikko Franck and Joshua Bell.
What about your work challenges you on a daily basis? The challenge is to find a way for the MCO to bring everything it has to offer and its special energy to all of the places in the world where it is needed and welcomed. It is a giant puzzle, putting together the places, projects, artists and ideas in combinations and configurations that are exciting and rewarding for all involved.
What do you find inspiring about your job? I am inspired by our musicians, who show in so many ways that playing music is more than just a job for them.
What is your most memorable moment with the orchestra? In our work there are a lot of unforgettable moments, both good and bad: volcanic ash, bankrupt airlines, snowstorms – but also: the first time I saw flowers fly onto the stage at the end of a concert with Claudio Abbado; the whole orchestra swimming in the Adriatic Sea on an afternoon in November during an Italian tour; the MCO finally giving a staged performance of the opera Wozzeck in 2010, after the performances had been cancelled the first time in Aix-en-Provence in 2003; our musicians covered with flower garlands after each concert on our first tour to incredible India in January 2012; orchestra and chamber music concerts at Reykjavik’s concert hall Harpa at midsummer, when it stayed light all night long; the MCO playing the Beethoven Journey at Jordan Hall in Boston, my home town, with family and friends in the audience.
The first piece of music you fell in love with: One of them was Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade – I played an excerpt from it in my trumpet lessons when I was about 10, and my teacher gave me a cassette tape of the whole piece. I would listen to it in the car while traveling on school vacation with my family and it made the never-ending highways of the American Midwest seem like a magical place. Later it was Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and then Brahms’ First Piano Concerto and the St. Matthew Passion.
BIOGRAPHY
Maggie Coe has been with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra since 2001. She began as an intern and then worked as production assistant and later Project Manager. She took on the role of Planning Manager in March 2015.
Maggie grew up in house where orchestral music was always on the radio or record player, and spent her free time playing trumpet and piano and singing in various choirs near her home in a suburb of Boston, USA. After graduating from college with a degree in Literature, she moved to Berlin.
Bearing rudimentary German skills and without the faintest idea of what was in store for her, she appeared at the MCO office (which at the time consisted of just 4 staff members) and was immediately assigned the task of sending out parts for entire operas like Pelléas et Mélisande, Fidelio, and Wozzeck.
She continued to work for the MCO while completing her studies in German literature at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. Her responsibilities gradually expanded, and for several years during and after her studies she worked as Project Manager, organizing logistical details for the orchestra’s tours all over Europe and world.
In her current position as Director
of Artistic Planning, she is responsible for filling the orchestra’s calender
with projects, tours, and collaborations.
