About me

First, here are a few key facts about me (for those who don't want to read a long text):

• Born in 1982
• Taking singing lessons with my vocal teacher, Iduna Demmer, since 2017
• Member and soprano singer of the Protestant Church Choir in Langenbach since 2021 and the Langenbach Motet Choir since 2026 (see: Choirs)
• Happily married to Michael Harry Poths since May 24, 2024 (civil ceremony) and May 25, 2024 (church wedding)
• YES, there is a bit of an age gap between us (23 years)
• Extremely introverted and rather shy, despite regularly performing on stage
• My professional background outside music:
  Production assistant (2000–2014)
  Media designer (2014–2024)
  Currently retraining to become an office management clerk
• My hobbies besides music:
  Long walks in the woods, birdwatching, playing video games and daydreaming

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And now for the somewhat (very!) more detailed version:

I was born in Weilburg, Germany, in January 1982, and my name at birth was Nicole Yvonne Caspari.

My father, Klaus Caspari, worked as a musician and solo entertainer from as early as the 1960s until his death in 2007. Shortly before he passed away, he had celebrated his 50th anniversary as a performer. My brother, Jürgen Caspari, is still active as a musician today. And although the photo might suggest otherwise, for most of my life I seemed to have missed out on the musical gene.
In any case, all my father's attempts to teach me to play the accordion were unsuccessful because, as a child, I simply had no interest in it whatsoever, especially when it came to practising. I was also such a shy, anxious and reserved child that singing in front of an audience was completely out of the question.

I made just one exception in 1989, when I was seven years old. My father persuaded me to sing „Süßer die Glocken nie klingen”, a traditional German Christmas carol, together with him accompanying me on the keyboard at a Christmas party in our local community hall.

That was to be not only my first performance, but also my only one for many, many years.

In 1995, I was confirmed in the Protestant church. My grandmother had told me that it was traditional to join the local church choir after confirmation. I thought this was a lovely tradition worth preserving, so I decided to follow it.
However, because of the shyness I mentioned earlier, I didn't actually sing along. I merely moved my lips, not only during performances but even at rehearsals! After all, the women singing next to me might otherwise have heard my voice. Unthinkable!
Needless to say, this wasn't exactly an enjoyable experience, so I left the choir again fairly soon...

At the age of 18, I started working as a production assistant on an assembly line, alternating between early, late and night shifts.
I always made good use of the fairly long commute to and from work, which took an hour each way, by listening to music and singing along at the top of my lungs. Nobody could hear me in the car, after all.
I realised just how much joy singing brought me, and I would have loved to join a choir again. Unfortunately, working shifts made it impossible to attend rehearsals regularly.

It would take another 14 years, by which time I was already over 30, for my circumstances to change.
I got a job working from home. No more rotating shifts. For the first time, it was actually possible to pursue a hobby that involved meeting at a fixed time every week.

There was no doubt in my mind about what I wanted to do: I wanted to take singing lessons!

So I googled singing teachers in my area and discovered Iduna Demmer.
After a great deal of hesitation, I finally contacted her. On August 16, 2017, I walked into her teaching room for the very first time, nervous beyond belief. Unsurprisingly, my audition did not go particularly well.
Fortunately, she wasn't put off by this. And I refused to let myself, or rather my own doubts, discourage me. From that point on, I attended singing lessons every week.
With each lesson, my fear and nervousness diminished, while my joy in singing grew.

Of course, one of the aims of singing lessons is eventually to share what you have learned with an audience.

My first solo performance took place on June 8, 2018. It was a Mozart evening, featuring arias and duets from Mozart's operas.

Alongside several duet parts, I performed „Giunse alfin il momento / Deh vieni, non tardar”, Susanna's recitative and aria from „The Marriage of Figaro”, as well as „Il Capro E La Capretta”, Marcellina's aria from the same opera.

I was incredibly nervous, and my singing reflected that. I was so dissatisfied with my performance that I kept bursting into tears for days afterwards. There is a video recording of the concert, but to this day I have never watched it because I find it so embarrassing.

Unfortunately, there is only one real cure for stage fright: performing again and again.
My next concert, a Christmas concert later that same year, went much better, and so did the concerts that followed.

At the time, my singing teacher and her husband ran a café with a beer garden at weekends. She came up with the idea of having some of her students perform there, and I was one of them.

I performed there fairly regularly, particularly in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when concerts in indoor venues were prohibited.
Here is one example: my performance of „Memory” from the musical „Cats“, recorded on June 29, 2020.

In 2021, I rejoined the Protestant Church Choir in Langenbach. Yes, the very same choir I had left in the 1990s after moving my lips instead of actually singing because I was so shy (meanwhile, of course, I make sure my voice can be heard)!

A little later, not only my musical life but also my personal life was about to take a very unexpected and wonderful turn:

It must have been around the middle of 2022. I went to the bank to withdraw some money, which was fairly unremarkable in itself. But then I noticed a poster on the noticeboard near the ATM.
It read:

New concert choir in Weilmünster

I read it carefully and thought to myself: „What wonderful, challenging music! I would absolutely love to sing in that choir!”

It wasn't until January 2023 that I finally plucked up the courage to email the choir director. Little did I know that I was writing to my future husband...

In my e-mail, I wrote that I had been taking singing lessons since 2017 and had been singing in a Protestant church choir since 2021. I also admitted that I couldn't read sheet music, which I knew was actually a requirement for joining his choir, but that I was willing to learn and take music theory lessons with him.

We started chatting on WhatsApp and gradually began sharing our life stories with each other. We discovered that we had a great deal in common beyond our love of music and got along exceptionally well.

He not only welcomed me into his choir but also gave me weekly lessons in music theory, followed later by piano lessons. He also took me along to the church where he plays the organ every week.
And then everything happened very quickly...
On February 7, 2023, we became a couple. Exactly three months later, on May 7, we got engaged.

At the time, Michael had a vocal cord polyp (which was successfully removed surgically in February 2024). Because of it, he could no longer sing the liturgical responses traditionally led by a cantor during Mass, so he taught me how to sing them instead. This led to me becoming a volunteer cantor at the Catholic Church of St Peter and Paul in Bad Camberg.
You can find numerous recordings from that period under Music videos: Catholic Liturgy | Cantor services.

On May 24, 2024, we got married in a civil ceremony, followed by our church wedding the very next day, on May 25.

Naturally, we couldn't resist singing the Alleluia acclamation and the verse before the Gospel ourselves during our wedding service (you can hear it in the video below from 06:46 onwards).
Later, during the wedding reception, we surprised our guests with a duet of „The Prayer”, originally performed by Céline Dion and Andrea Bocelli (you can hear it in the video below from 35:40 onwards).

If you don't want to search or scroll through the video above, you can also watch and listen to this recording made by one of our wedding guests:

Since then, we have performed at numerous concerts together and provided music for church services of various denominations. I have also had the honour of singing at baptisms, weddings and funeral services. All of this brings me tremendous joy, and I hope there will be many more opportunities in the future to bring happiness to people through our music, or to offer them a little comfort during difficult and sorrowful times.

Thank you to everyone who is, or has been, part of our journey, and to everyone who supports us and appreciates what we do!

If you have any questions or requests, please feel free to get in touch via the contact form and/or follow me on social media:

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