In the orchestra with his father, in the band with his brother - and on the road with his granddaughter.
In the "Family Stories" series, ten musicians, two members of the management team and Music Director Paavo Järvi talk about their parents, siblings and children.
They reveal the music they grew up with and how they organise everyday life as a musical couple. In the third and final part, Tanita Schambach, Johannes Gürth, Sarina Zickgraf and Thomas García open up their photo albums.
"My father Christoph Schambach is a freelance composer - and exactly how you would imagine a composer to be. He's constantly humming melodies to himself, often with his head elsewhere. That sometimes annoyed me as a child, but it created a very special atmosphere at home. And the way he treated me and my sister, so emotionally and empathetically, is still impressive to me. My mum is also a freelance photographer. For a while, my parents also ran a mustard factory, which today would be called a start-up; they produced banana mustard, raspberry mustard and all kinds of blends. It may well be that my need for professional stability and clear structures has to do with the fact that these were only available to a limited extent in the Berlin artist household.
But my father passed on his musical interests to me. He regularly took us to concerts, especially at the Konzerthaus Berlin. And once my sister and I were given small roles in his 'Leichenoper', a song opera based on texts by Daniel Morgenroth. After I couldn't warm to the violin and piano, I discovered singing; I had private lessons and sang in the youth choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. There I experienced for the first time how complex such an institution is, how many departments there are, how many people labour for weeks and months to bring about a performance.
I initially planned to study singing, but in the end that was too uncertain for me. So I studied musicology for a few semesters and trained as an event manager. Now I work in fundraising at the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft Zürich, as part of an organisation that is just as fascinating as I imagined it would be as a teenager. I still sing, I love the great choral works - and my father's songs. He writes very classically, tonally, sometimes with a jazzy flavour. I think it's nice that his music is so accessible."
"My eight-year-old granddaughter Emily realised that this magazine is about families and asked me to tell her something. She has been to the Tonhalle many times and I am always amazed at what she notices here. She is impressed by the many seats in the hall. At the 'Viel Meer' family concert, she thought it was funny that we were wearing wellies. And when we were backstage once, she wanted to see exactly where the dancers had gone in 'Sleeping Beauty'. She dances herself at every opportunity and wanted to join the children's ballet on her own initiative.
She is often at home with us, as are the other three grandchildren. We have a big box with all kinds of instruments - recorders, bells, hand drums, things like that. There's also a harp, a Tibetan horn and ukuleles, and they never say: be careful, it's delicate. The children are allowed to use everything, but with feeling, that's important; with feeling for what you're doing and for the ears of others. If they really want to learn something, they are taught by my wife, on the piano or the violin.
Emily is the child of my daughter Naïma, who is a professional jazz saxophonist and also sings in many concerts. I performed with her years ago with my own arrangements in the Kleine Tonhalle or with a band in the Jazzkantine Lucerne, which was a great pleasure. I also have two sons, one of whom still plays the trombone in the Stadtmusik and the other was a drummer. I would have liked to learn all these instruments myself, but I wasn't allowed to: because it would have been too loud in my parents' flat in Vienna, and because they were afraid I might fall into the pop trap. They both sang passionately in the choir, but they didn't want me to become a professional musician. Nevertheless, it couldn't be prevented ..
But back to the grandchildren. Emily told me that I shouldn't just mention music: We also play football, Playmobil and Mastermind, we write stories together or go into the woods. I really enjoy being a grandfather."
"Even as a very small child, I wanted my father's violin; whenever it was on the shelf, I was obviously always trying to get to it. When I was about three years old, my parents gave me a 32nd violin, a tiny instrument that I didn't want to let go of. At the age of four, I received a scholarship from the Pflüger Foundation in Freiburg, where I stayed until I went to university. There were not only individual lessons, but also group lessons, ensemble lessons and regular auditions; it was a very varied education.
Everyone at home studied music. But we didn't just study classical music, we've always played and listened to everything. My father once had a swing band, I sang in a jazz choir. And together with my brother, I had a band for a while with which we mainly played cover songs at weddings and other celebrations. My brother played the drums and I played the piano.
My sister is a violinist and is now studying medicine. We grew up in Waldkirch near Freiburg im Breisgau and performed a lot in the region from an early age. When we play concerts together today, we change instruments; we combine violin, viola and piano in all kinds of constellations. Even though she is now going in a different direction professionally, we take every opportunity to perform together.
That's a good addition for me. I've loved playing in the orchestra ever since I was in the German National Youth Orchestra. And I like the fact that here in the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, in addition to the symphony concerts, there is also film music or the electronic projects of tonhalleLATE. I've been on the Orchestra Board for two years and have been its President since March 2024; I really want to get fully involved. But there also needs to be projects that have nothing to do with the orchestra - so that music remains a bit of a hobby."
"I grew up with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, because my father Oscar García played with the 1st violins from 1979. Later, when I was studying in Munich, I often listened to the orchestra on the radio. At that time, the Beethoven recordings with David Zinman had just come out, it was a time of upswing; that naturally appealed to me. When a position became available shortly before I graduated, I applied for the audition. It wasn't at all certain that I would win it, the competition was fierce. You don't get something like that for free and certainly not 'inherited'. But it worked out.
In 2002, I ended up in the same voice group as my father. As we rotated in the line-up, we were always sitting together on the podium. That was normal for us, as we had played together since I was a child. We get on well and have the same sense of humour. When we were on tour, we often went on excursions, for example to the Great Wall of China. And we also had joint projects outside the orchestra, such as a tango quintet. My father came to Switzerland from Argentina and he definitely passed on his passion for South American music to me.
he retired in 2014, but I'm still often asked about him. He was a striking personality in the orchestra - with his charisma, his elegance. Sometimes he still comes to listen, he is enthusiastic about Paavo Järvi and the many young people who have moved up. And he teaches my son, who also plays the violin. The three of us recently gave a concert in Dübendorf, three generations on stage; there was even a report about it in the 'Glattaler'. My daughter is also a musician, she plays the piano like my wife and has already won various prizes. I'm delighted that the family tradition is continuing.
Would I like my son to join the orchestra later? You can't plan something like that. But I certainly wouldn't mind."
We use deepL.com for our translations into English.
