Capella Edina: how Luis Schmidt, a young conductor from Munich, came to found Edinburgh's first professional philharmonic orchestra in almost ninety years

Luis Schmidt & Capella Edina (Photo: Euan Robertson)

Luis Schmidt, a conductor from Munich who has just turned 22, founded Capella Edina in Edinburgh in 2024, the city's first professional philharmonic orchestra in almost ninety years. For its second season in 2026, Capella Edina is presenting four concerts at venues from the Caird Hall in Dundee to the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. The second concert of their season, Spring is at the Usher Hall on 3 June when Luis Schmidt conducts Capella Edina in music by Vaughan Williams, Britten and Copland.

The orchestra and its location came about through a series of circumstances. Luis moved to Newcastle to study for his degree and was introduced to Edinburgh by a friend who was working there. On his first visit to the city, Luis fell in love with it. He also took on board his friend's comment that Edinburgh did not have its own professional orchestra. Also whilst studying in Newcastle Luis met the conductor Robert Ames through the Royal Northern Sinfonia. Amongst Ames's advice to a young conductor was the suggestion that he form his own orchestra, that way you learn who to do things. And Luis would also get the same advice from his teacher in Germany, Bruno Weil.

Luis felt that if he was going to found an orchestra he was going to do it properly and Edinburgh seemed the obvious choice. Not only did it not have a resident professional orchestra but Luis enjoyed the city a lot. There were discussions with the Musicians Union about pay and conditions, something that Luis thought important if the orchestra was to contribute to the local area. Also these conversations helped with the process of finding players.

The orchestra now has a core of players who do most of the concerts. And Luis enjoys the fact that he is meeing different people yet has something in common with them. All the players, he feels, take pleasure in sharing their joy with the audience. The orchestra is reliant on philanthropy and ticket sales for its income, with private support plus support from trusts and foundations. They do not receive anything from the council. Currently the orchestra is run by a small team, there are just three of them (with two of those part-time).

Luis comments that it would be nice to get to the stage where the orchestra was self-sufficient and that donations would elevate them. He would like to be able to afford to do semi-staged operas, and to do outreach work. But he feels that there is an advantage to being lean, and he points out that there is a lot of machinery behind many established orchestras. Orchestras are cost intensive and it is a challenge reducing costs without limiting the artists or artistic quality.

One of the focuses of the orchestra from Luis's point of view is the wish to make music more accessible.

Luis Schmidt & Capella Edina at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Luis is from a non-musical family from Munich. He learned the trumpet in secondary school partly because friends from primary school were musical and planned to join a wind band and he wanted to follow them. He admits that he didn't really practice but seeing the bands at the Trooping of Colour rather inspired him. Age fifteen he approached the British Army asking how he could join the band of the Household Division. Their response was that he would need to be over sixteen and to be British! But as a teenage trumpeter in the school orchestra he rather got bored and started watching the conductor.

One of his teachers was an oboe player who had played in the Mozarteum Orchestra. Luis confided in this man that he was interested in conducting and the man got in contact with the conductor Bruno Weil who was the former head of conducting at the Mozarteum. Weil responded and Luis went to meet him at his home in Augsburg. Luis found that first session an eye opening afternoon and he returned two weeks later. He continues going to see Weil, visiting him when Luis is in the area. Weil's teaching is very analysis focused and Luis thinks it is important to understand what you are working on. Luis comments that though Weil has so much experience, Luis feels that they are on the same wavelength and they agree on things. He adds that it is important to find a teacher that you agree with, that the most important thing is the music not showmanship.

Luis's school orchestra did a joint concert with the Munich Philharmonic and Luis also went to their young people's concerts. He found this a nice way of being introduced to classical music. Going to normal classical concerts makes him think that there should be a different way of engaging the audience. Having someone presenting, engaging with the audience is more interesting, with explanations of why the pieces are in the programme.

Whilst orchestras do not need to innovate overly, Luis thinks it important that they find a way of reflecting both the times and the needs of the audience. In some classical concerts there is too much the feeling of the orchestra playing at the audience ratehr than interacting. He points out that not many people actually read programme notes and he appreciates the way Aurora Orchestra interacts with the audience without ever feeling they are patronising them. For Capella Edina's concerts, Luis addresses the audience, explaining what makes the works special and why they are in the programme.

When he started the orchestra, his first question was how to found an orchestra? He admits to having Googled this, but received much useful advice from Robert Ames. He also decided that from the beinning the orchestra would be a charity which meant it needed three trustees. Through university in Newcastle he had met Chris Bruerton from the Kings Singers. They got on, and Luis liked the way the Kings Singers' programming mixed styles with everything themed. Works were presented as they are, but in surroundings that were different. Chris Bruerton became a trustee.

For the orchestra's first concert season (in 2025), each concert had a theme and Luis narrated. The programmes had a main classical work along with something more recent, and a mixture of repertore with the intention of catering to different tastes whilst at the same time helping to introduce people to something new. For their first concert in January 2025 at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, the programme mixed Bruckner's Symphony No. 6 with John Williams's music from Star Wars and a commission from James Clay, a young Newcastle-based composer. Luis feels that Williams's music has influences from Bruckner. Also, the orchestra enjoyed the programme as did the audience which drew a mix of Bruckner lovers and young people interested in Star Wars. The success of the concert helped to kick-start the orchestra.

The Lord Provost of Edinburgh contacted the orchestra (rather aptly Edinburgh is twinned with Munich, Luis's home city) and they gave a concert in Jun 2025 celebrating 900 years of the City of Edinbugh. The concert had an audience of 1500 people in the Usher Hall with music on a Scottish theme including Bliss's Edinburgh Overture (written for the 1956 Edinburgh Festival), a lovely piece that is rarely performed. The tickets were free, and Luis enjoyed the way they got positive feedback from people who would not normally attend a classical concert.

He thinks that such events are important to bring people together, creating a nice moment when you sit in a concert hall, switch off from the outside world and be in the moment. For him, this is what music is for and he wants to share this with the audience. In September 2026 they are doing another free concert at the Usher Hall, again with a Scottish theme. A young Italian violinist, Andrea Cicalese is playing Bruch's Scottish Fantasia and there is music by Malcolm Arnold, James MacMillan, and Max Richter along with music from pipes and drums.

The orchestra has a mix of personnel with recent graduates from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, freelance players from other Scottish orchestras and teachers from the Guildhall School. Luis describes them as a lovely group of players, and meeting them at the orchestra's first concert helped him to crystallise what his vision is. He admits that in many ways it is a scratch band, but they work well together and are growing together. Also, the orchestra gives young people the same age him the chance to play in an orchestra.

When I chatted to Luis he was just back from Dundee where the orchestra had given a concert at Caird Hall jointly with the Band of His Majesty’s Royal Marines Scotland in support of the Royal Marines Charity. The Band does not normally do orchestral concerts and so wind and brass from the Band joined with strings from the Orchestra. Luis was accomodated at HMS Caledonia and held sectional rehearsals with the wind and brass from the Band. There were differences in playing style between the orchestral players and band members, with the latter getting to perform music they did not normally play. The feedback he got from both from band members and orchestral players was very positive and Luis points out that music is there for collaboration. He would be keen to do it again. There was a variety to the concert's programming as it included Beethoven's Wellington’s Victory along with a piece by French contemporary composer Camille Pépin.

Returning to the subject of free concerts, this is something that Luis had experience in Munich. He feels that they are a great idea, enabling them to make music accessible. But there is a need to maintain the highest artistic quality possible, something that is important to him and to the musicians. After all, they are all part of the same journey.

In November the orchestra is joining forces with indie artist Fink. Luis had come across the album that Fink recorded with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2014 and found the music well done and well crafted. Luis feels that with most pop artists, the music does not work particularly well with orchestra whereas Fink's style and music did. They approached Fink who was interested and the concert will include selections from his forthcoming 2026 album. Fink loved the idea of collaboration and there will be new arrangements with Luis making some. With Fink interested and engaged the idea is to create something musical out of the event. Alongside Fink there will be pieces by Camille Pépin and Michael Hoppé. Camille Pépin is a composer whose music Luis thinks remains accessible to the audience as she does not push things too far. Luis feels that with contemporary music if it is too 'out there' you close more doors than you open.

On 3 June 2026, the orchestra gives a concert on the theme of Spring which Luis says is a programme most special for him. The first half focuses on Vaughan Williams with the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Oboe Concerto, and in the second half there is Britten's Suite on English Folk Tunes, op. 90 (“A Time There Was…”) and Copland's Appalachian Spring. The oboe soloist is Ralf Ebner who is that former teacher of Luis's who recommended him to Bruno Weil. The selection of RVW's oboe concerto came about because Luis asked Ebner what he wanted to play. Without him, Luis feels that he would not be conducting which makes the event a very special occasion. Luis and the orchestra are working towards a tour in 2028, taking a Scottish programme mixing Bruch and Mendelssohn to Germany and Switzerland.

Listening to Luis talking about the orchestra I was struck that he has had an enormous amount of luck, support and help. Founding orchestras is no easy task, nor is keeping them running. But Luis clearly has the drive, focus, energy and imagination needed, as well as the necessary personal charm and interesting ideas. And you think that if he can do this in his early 20s, what will he get up to next.

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