Portrait of Kuno as a teacher of music
Kuno is a charismatic teacher of violin and ensembles and has from an early age developed the scope of his teaching so that today, apart from teaching violin it encompasses music dramatic storytales and performances in which students and audience are actively co-creating and become an integrated part of the emerging music. His approach is intuitive, and he is deeply engaged in developing teaching methods which support children and youth in creating their own musical universe.
Alongside with his own career Kuno has since his early youth been teaching violin and ensemble playing, conducted string orchestras and created multimedia concerts together with children, youth and adults.
In spring 2012 Kuno was engaged for a project at Copenhagen Language Center together with Camilla Kirchhoff, violoncel, and Erik Jakobsson, conductor. Together with the centre’s foreign students they created a concert about language. Danish, the acquired language, and the mother tongues of the students were reframed into a composition for string trio and talking choir. The composition emerged during the interaction with the students who were immigrants from Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Greece, Philippines. Thailand and Equador.
He has been employed with a number of music schools; since 1998 with Hvidovre District Music School. Here, apart from his teaching, he has produced and led youth orchestra tours in Europe for the symphonic collaborations of the region. He has also arranged annual tours for string orchestra in Denmark and abroad since 1999. Among these Kuno points at a tour for his young string players to Ireland to perform arrangements of Irish folk music in schools and local pubs.
Kuno has also initiated collaborations with music schools and school choirs in a number of Danish towns, incl. Hjørring, Kalundborg, Ringkøbing, Esbjerg, Fanø, Bornholm, Roskilde, Kolding,Tårnby, Slagelse, København og Hvidovre.
About his teaching work, Kuno says:
First and foremost I would like to give children and youth the possibility of making a qualified choice.Good teaching to me is not about I giving an instruction or sum up of what the student has to do or reach, but that we rather start a workshop setting in which we rehearse and play and harness the art of listening to oneself and to one another. If one is able to catch the extent of that happy moment, then you also have an experience to bring home and rehearse. And hereby the student qualifies him- og herself to decide the scope of his or her development in the field of music. This is at best done in a shared room, and therefore I work a lot with letting the students play together from a very early age.
When I play music, stories impercebtibly find their way into the music, like a cat leaning unto your leg on a windy winter’s day. So in my work with children – and for that matter with adults as well – a narrative angle always appears in our joint creative work. I always try to make those thousands of layers visible which are present in the music – and at long last in themselves. The student must have a vision, and I have to offer an inspiration.