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Behind the Scenes: Head of Service at the Gasteig

The Gasteig invites you to change your perspective with us. How do the people who work behind the scenes experience the art centre’s operations? Nuredin Sula, Head of Service at the Isarphilharmonie, describes the events before, during and after an evening’s performance from his perspective.

The entrance area of the concert hall, a man points the way for two people with an outstretched arm.
Copyright: Benedikt Feiten/Gasteig

With different eyes

When you’re out and about with Nuredin Sula on an event evening, there’s never a dull moment: Waving to the catering staff here, giving the caretaker a hug there, he distributes information among his team. When guests don’t happen to need his help, he can rely on his phone to ring every few minutes. Sounds hectic, but watching him, you get a very different impression. Sula is one of those people who are fully there for whoever they are dealing with, no matter how brief the encounter.

Hardly surprising, then, that almost everyone here knows his name. Employed by event management specialists VD Mayr, Sula’s role is Head of Service for the Isarphilharmonie at the Gasteig. What does that entail? “I make sure that people who visit the Gasteig feel comfortable, safe and well informed.” Before each concert, he meets with his team to clarify details: Which cloakrooms are open? Are discounted tickets for under-30s available? What are the rules for taking photos and late admissions?

A group of people, in the centre a man in a dark suit, talking and gesticulating.
“I have a great team,” says Nuredin Sula. Before the concert, he discusses the important points for the evening with his staff. Copyright: Benedikt Feiten/Gasteig
A man and a woman in conversation, the woman has tickets in her hand.
The box office is already closed, but together with Irmengard Lehnacker from Munich’s University of Music and Performing Arts, Sula can still organise tickets for a late arrival. Copyright: Benedikt Feiten/Gasteig

“Visitors have lots of questions,” says Sula: Where to find the Open Library’s book return, which encore was played, or whether you might be able to catch the evening’s stars at the stage entrance for an autograph. His team helps wherever it can, whatever the question. “We always try to find a solution,” he says.

 

Nuredin Sula loves to talk about the good deeds of his staff. How once, two of his people accompanied a concertgoer with a walking frame home on foot for more than two kilometres when she was stranded in the snow after a concert, with neither taxis nor public transport running.  Or the time when a member of staff was the first to recognise that an artist was suffering from circulation problems and, thanks to her presence of mind, ensured that the ambulance arrived on time.

A man in a dark suit holds a gong in his hand.
When the audience poles outdoors during the interval, Nuredin Sula uses his gong to call people back into the auditorium for the second half of the concert. Copyright: Benedikt Feiten/Gasteig

Sula has been working at the Gasteig since 2011. He holds a PhD in law, has worked in North Macedonia as a criminology assistant and in the country’s Interior Ministry, is a co-founder of two NGOs and runs a large FC Bayern fan club. Not surprising, then, that even a shift at the Gasteig cannot faze him. “These three to four hours are very intense, but it’s a positive stress.”

Off to the Isarphilharmonie

Having directed countless visitors to their seats, Sula quickly organises unredeemed tickets for a late-arriving couple. “I knew there were almost 30 uncollected tickets,” he says. After the concert, a person approaches him, distraught, having lost her wallet. A call to the cloakroom and a brief search upstairs later, and the wallet is found, handed in at the restaurant. The evening’s last problem is solved. “Want a bite to eat, Nuri?” asks the bartender. Nuri takes a glass of water before finally leaving for home himself.

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