From the tuba to the piccolo, sixty-six women, twenty-one different instruments, and the widest possible range of female life plans and histories come together in an elementary school every Tuesday evening to make music together. Combined they are more than 2700 years old: the youngest is barely twenty and the oldest celebrated her 70th birthday years ago. This is where the postwar generation meets postmodernity; the minister's daughter from the once-socialist East meets the Catholic girl from Cologne; the organic farmer meets the food chemist; and the policewoman, the bohemian. Some love women; others, men. They live with children or without, as a couple or confirmed single. They wear Birkenstocks, high heels, or walk barefoot. All kinds of women are welcome in this open-minded, tolerant community. No matter where a woman comes from, how she votes, or whom she loves. There's only one requirement: a love of music. Once you have attended an FBOB concert, you too will realize that these women are not your run-of-the-mill band of lay musicians. Instead, their joy in playing and in living is contagious-no matter whether they are performing in Berlin's Philharmonic Hall, the Zeiss planetarium, or a beer tent in Bavaria. At a time of growing social isolation, the FBOB is a piece of real solidarity; a place where perfectly ordinary (yet different) women pull together to pull off something extraordinary-precisely because they always remain true to themselves.