Quirina Lechmann

“Sunbeam” (2022) is a photographic series composed of portraits that include mysterious, whimsical and surreal elements, combined with classic aesthetics inspired by the photography of Horst P. Horst and his photographs of bathers.

Rodríguez recreates in his work a sophisticated and elegant world where primary colours (blue, yellow, red) burst with extremely loose brushstrokes, endowing each image with unusual energy.

It highlights the concept of beauty that the photographer has. For this reason, he intensely studied classical poses through Greek sculpture and traditional painting, imbuing them with an aura of mystery through a classical sense of composition and situation of the model.

Swiss and Belgian Coloratura Soprano living in Switzerland

Tell us a little bit about yourself and what was the starting point and a reason for your career?

I was always a performer who loved to sing. As a child I loved being in front of people, whether it was to play the piano, sing, dance, do playback, recite poems, show pictures or just talk didn’t matter.

Later, after receiving criticism and more importantly criticizing myself a lot, it became more difficult, but still, music was my way of getting out there and showing people my true self.

Then, when it was time to do my studies, it became harder. My parents had certain expectations I didn’t share. I wanted to go into music, but they were adamant that I study something “real”. So, I went to University, studied languages and got my teacher’s diploma for ESL (English as a second language) and DAF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache).

Still, I couldn’t be without music, kept playing the piano and then enrolled at conservatory for classical singing (behind my parents’ backs).

The real reason for my career in singing, however, came after finishing my studies and finally meeting someone who believed in me. So, one day – quite out of the blue – I enrolled in a singing masterclass, got a new singing teacher, and started doing my own thing.

How did you find yourself in concerts organization?

My boyfriend – and sometimes partner in crime, Gianin Conrad is an installation artist, a sculptor. He makes the things in museums that, most people question. If you see it, you ask yourself: What is that? Why would anyone do this? Why is this art and why would the museum exhibit this? – showed me that it’s easier to organize than wait for opportunities. So, after trying, and thus organizing a first performance, I started doing it again and again, becoming bolder: Next to small concerts, I’ve written and performed experimental music plays, made a CD with my own translations of Mozart Arias and started a music and art space called “Scala Trun” last year.

Tell us more about your experience which is connected to the music?

Next to singing in my own concerts and musical theatres, I take on roles in opera productions. I’ve sung small parts like Virtù in Monteverdi’s “Lincoronazione di Poppea”, and bigger, more theatrical and funny parts like Adele in Strauss’ “Fledermaus”. However, I’ve also done some theatre – with extra singing parts for me – and played roles like Flavia Brent/Belinda Blair in Michail Frayns “Noises Off”.

Increasingly I enjoy writing my ownplays and taking existing music from various composers to give the right feeling to them. Sometimes I also compose own parts in these. Until now mainly the recitativos, but who knows where it’s headed. At the moment I’m looking forward to showing off my Verdi-knowledge and dramatics: I’ll be singing Violetta (La Traviata) in Wales this Spring.

Can you tell us about exhibitions which were created by your ideas?

I see myself as an artist, but more a performance artist, than an exhibition artist. So, I collaborate in exhibitions as a performance artist, who creates her own performances, without asking the artist for input. I’m very lucky to sometimes be allowed to do something with Gianin Conrad’s exhibitions: At the Kunstraum Engländerbau, Vaduz (Lichtenstein), for example, or at the Gallery Base-Alpha, Antwerp (Belgium), where I could use the installation playing with electric-voltage and the way our brains perceive the reality of the world. I loved interpreting these views and using the idea of electric-voltage for my singing. In one part, I depicted my impression of the electric chair.

I have, however, also worked on new concepts with him. For the Intra Muros Art Festival in Winterthur, for example, we created “das Ding mit der Schönheit” together, both taking what we can and know into the concept, so an ever-changing clay sculpture could be seen, as well as a video projected on it and me performing with it. There was a combination of me moving and singing on the video and me in the live performance, working on the sculpture while singing.

Ph: @kseniya.polishchuk_ph Style: @mmila_milk & @julia.balanik

How can you describe yourself as a person and as a professional of what you are doing?

I’m a person who likes to be busy and do a lot. I don’t like to not have a reason to get up in the mornings, because of not having a plan. This does not mean that I need every hour planned and lots of meetings, but I love the thrill of having an idea and start working on it. I like having various things going on next to one another. At the moment, for example, I teach some English at a grammar school, learn new roles for a program in New York and repeat the role of Violetta for the spring production. Next to that I’m starting up new projects for next winter and spring. Even though I like to keep rolling, I take every smallest part of my life and my ideas very seriously. I want to give my best and in that way being the professional I am, keeping in mind that my best is not your best, or your best is not my best.

Every working experience is something important. Can you remember the most interesting and special one for you?

I think the most special for me, was also my biggest experiment: The “Musik-Pick-Nick”, was some kind or experimental real-life-play, wherein a host took guests out of the city into the woods for an afternoon of eating, drinking, music and enjoyment. The concept of the story was a picnic and the historic ideas behind it. The performance itself was giving the guests food and music. Again, the idea of the story of the play was doubled in the performance. The music started from a classical piano and voice serenade, went to sounds and voice play in nature, then to the experiment of violin and bass with voice, then a Pied Piper of Hamelin sort of parade, and finally back to all three instruments and voice classically put together. The idea was luckily considered so good, that I won a prize for it (which made the performance possible).

I remember the trouble we had getting the piano into the woods, the work I did preparing baskets and cooking for all the guests and thus being so tired already before the performance.

How can you show love to music and people through your work?

I show my love of music by pouring myself into it, interpreting it, giving it life and feeling. When I perform, I love to watch my audience (if possible). Their faces say it all: the contentment, the love, the expectation, the surprise – or the hate.

After a performance, many people like to come and congratulate. This is the time I can see whether I had an impact or not. I love to see men and women so in love with my music that they linger around to hold on to their feeling of connectedness to the arts.

Since when you found yourself in music and which instruments can you play?

I started playing the piano when I was six, after singing for myself all the time, and nagging my parents for piano lessons. When I was seven, I also went to flute lessons for two years, because school dictated it. Later, I believe I was around 10, I met an organist and started playing that instrument for a while as well. I also played around with the instruments we had at home: a children’s violin and a banjo. I took piano lessons until I was 18, when I changed to singing for good.

What advice can you give to people who want to start a similar career as you?

Find your voice and find out what you love, whether that’s performing or organizing, writing new plays or composing, try it, then you’ll know. It’s hard and a lot of work, but you have to get yourself out there. Don’t keep your ideas inside, show them and build your audience. Every experience – whether positive or negative – teaches you. Keep on working on yourself always, life is learning