How would you describe your music?
„When I am sitting at the piano I always try to combine polyphonic or polyrhythmic sound patterns with serial elements from minimal music and melodic and harmonic set pieces from jazz and pop. The resulting music is sometimes audible silence, sometimes a song structure and then again a shimmering, serial carpet of sound. I consider my music as ambient, but you don’t have to be bored if you listen carefully.“
Any influences?
„I consider my music to be located between the serial music of Steve Reich and the melancholy of Ludovico Einaudi, and between the ballads of Keith Jarrett and the intimate piano sound tinkering of Nils Frahm, without denying my love for the classic or romantic tunes…“
Why is nobody allowed to call you a pianist?
„Because I’m not. To say so would be an insult to everyone who really is and who has worked hard for that status. I have played the piano all my life, but rather to create my own stuff than to interprete the stuff of others. Now I think like Patrick Carney, the drummer of the Black Keys, who – I think – once said: I can’t play the drums, but I’m a drummer!
My credo: As long as all the super pianists aren’t playing my stuff, I have to do the job … the music is definitely worth playing. And when I look at what other neoclassic piano virtuosos have to offer, I don’t have to hide.“
Your check out tips for „Serial Serenade“?
„Track 2: ‚Undulate in C Major‘ – A repetitive C key meets a dreamy melody and some serial sound clusters.
Track 5: ‚Undulate in E Flat Minor‘ – A serial black key orgy
Track 6: ‚Shiver in G Minor‘ – like a Largo by Vivaldi: a fragile, polyphonic, crystalline chill.
Track 9 ‚Yearn in E Flat Minor – meditative like the Mondschein Sonata, but on speed.“
Your check out tips for „Music For Night Shifts“?
„‚Zu lang‘ (Track 3) is the right start for the Night Shift album. It contemplates the thoughts of an aging night owl who realizes that a few things have to change. The only question is: how?
‚Like Michael Douglas in Falling Down‘ (Track4) is my current Berlin anthem. This is how I often feel when I take a walk through my neighborhood and hardly recognize it anymore. Starts like an early Tom Waits song and ends in an angry ‚Rachmaninoff staccato‘ …
The first interlude ‚Album Leaf For Alice, Not Elise‘ (Track 5) is a big thank you to Alice Sara Ott, whose YouTube-recording of Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto helped me through some of my darkest hours.
‚Für Dich und Mich‘ (Track 7) – a shimmering piano sound carpet meets the perhaps most beautiful melody I’ve ever written.
‚Was dann?‘ (Track 7) – A farewell song, sad and yet relaxed and flaky like a Chopin nocturne.“
It´s called „A Night Trilogy“ – what about Part III?
„I hope there will be the trilogy’s part III in 2020.
The last track on the Night Shift album anticipates the mood: the birds greet the day in our backyard in Berlin Mitte. One morning during the lockdown – I think it was March 28 at half past three – I just turned the microphone on and recorded it. How calm and at the same time lively … That will be the basic mood of the third part.“