I’m in a music studio in Munich. The walls are made from brick, the ceiling is wood—all very hard materials. Elsewhere in the building, there’s a red carpet that gives the place the atmosphere of a theater. There’s a big plant and in the corner, in front of the window, many other small plants. The studio is at the end of a corridor—it’s very quiet.

It was in this room that I recorded my most recent album, Sonor. Usually, studios have separate spaces for each musician, so that they can be recorded independently, but we recorded the album together, at the same time. I loved that, it was very intimate. 

But the space means more to me than that. It’s located in the largest cultural center in Europe, the Gasteig, in the cozy neighborhood of Haidhausen. The center is affiliated with the city’s Jazz Institute and I spent my first five years in Munich studying jazz vocals here. I was lucky enough to be the first-ever Mongolian student they accepted. 

In Germany, there are strict rules about practicing music in your apartment and the neighbors would complain if you tried. It became very important for me to have a place like this where I can sing loudly. During my studies, I would spend hours in the center’s practice rooms by myself, figuring out what kind of music I wanted to make.