I owe a lot to Marshall Raynor, to "Rusty". For seven years, from 1995 to 2001, I had an intense artistic collaboration and friendship with him. I was assigned to accompany
him on the piano for his acting class at the Musikhochschule in Munich. He has expanded my musical knowledge and skills with many facets of knowledge about direction,
staging and acting. And that's not all: he was a singer at the Isny Opera Festival, of which I am the artistic director: in the opera productions "The Nightingale" by Stravinsky,
"Meister Pedros Puppenspiel" and "La Vida Breve" by Manuel de Falla, in the musical "My Fair Lady" and in "Tales of Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach.
We also did tours with the operas.
And not only that: Rusty appeared with me as an actor in a theater group that we formed from Isny scholars. We acted in the style of the Commedia dell'Arte
"Les Fourberies de Scapin" by Molière and Goldoni´s "Pinocchio", we also showed the pieces in the surrounding area and even made a trip to Romania with this acting troupe.
In January 2001, Rusty invited me to San Francisco and gave me the opportunity to direct a production of Richard Strauss' opera Ariadne.
We were very good friends during those years; he gave me so much artistic guidance, energy, ideas and self-confidence..
also interesting impulses for improvisational acting exercises, which I did for years in an innovative way with the singers before the performances,
in order to stimulate their imagination and make their interactions more real and intense. Moreover he took me to the services of the liberal Jewish community "Beth Shalom"
in Munich and opened my eyes to this direction and to various aspects of Judaism in general. He took me a little way into Judaism, which I found interesting and enjoyed.-
I am very grateful to Rusty and I liked him very much.