Interview
What do you like most about working with the MCO?
A team that knows the perfect balance between strict planning and tasteful improvisation.
What is the most difficult aspect of your job?
Right now it’s keeping up with the dedication, energy and love everyone puts into every task.
What is the best thing about being a musician?
I believe being a musician gives you the chance to get in touch with a very human, pure and very powerful part of us on a regular basis - sort of getting in touch not only with our own soul, but ideally also reaching out to others while making musik. An unspoken connection.
The first piece of music you fell in love with:
That would definitely be Pamina’s aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute.
What makes a “perfect” concert?
The fact that everyone; musicians, organisations and audiences instantly know that it was a perfect concert makes it the “perfect” concert. That is the unspoken communication I mentioned earlier and if my words are too vague for some, then you have yet to experience the perfect concert…maybe one with the MCO!
Biography
Ohoude has always believed in the importance of culture in general and music in particular due to the subtle, yet impactful role it plays in society.
Early childhood piano lessons paved the way to classical music; those were lessons, which she tried to avoid by all means and hence discovered her creative talent for improvisation and convincing communication skills. Yet when it came to opera singing, she instantly fell in love with this art and even though her interest shifted over the years to what is happening behind the stage rather than being on it, she continues to sing and mentor some of her previous vocal students.
Ohoude is a Sawiris – DAAD alumna, who obtained her master’s degree in 2012 in opera singing from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. Her passion for creativity and for initiating new projects drove her in the same year to establish the GUC Music Academy in Cairo, an institution that offers musical education to non-music students, where they can explore the theoretical and practical aspects of music, participate in concerts, workshops, master classes, even perform in renowned radio stations, on television and gain experience in international exchange projects, especially between Egypt and Germany. Many of her students pursued careers in music and performing arts.
In the pursuit of finding new challenges, she worked for 2 years as business development manager at Arabesque International; one of the few performing art agencies in the MENA region, during which she successfully led many projects, including Kuwait's first ever ballet; Giselle performed by the iconic Italian ballet company of Teatro alla Scala.
Having returned to Germany, she decided to revamp her studies and started her second master’s degree, this time in cultural and media management at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg.
Starting work at the MCO, Ohoude couldn’t feel more at home, amongst a diverse, international and above all, creative team.