About me: extended version
Where to start? At the beginning, naturally, with my musical career. Actually that started with an ending as after I finished my musical training I had had enough of playing music.
So I started a sort of general degree at uni in Munich and then Tübingen
I earned my living doing a great variety of jobs until I got a permanent job as an assistant caretaker and cloakroom attendant. The rock band Neckarfront drew me back into the music scene.
Foto: Di Paolo
I ended up in Tübingen by chance because there happened to be a room available in a
house shared by students. From 1982 I was playing in the theatre orchestra at the Landestheater, Tübingen. Soon I was also working free-lance putting on musicals for children. From then on it isn’t easy to get an overview of my work, especially as I am also getting commissioned to compose – as in 2000 when I wrote a mass for choir, brass and church organ.
That’s the way things go. Lots of smaller jobs lead to your most important work. At the end of the nineties I put together a programme for the 150th anniversary of the 1848/49 revolution, entitled “ Leute, höret die Geschichte” (People, listen to your history). In my search for songs and texts from that period I came across the barrel organ, which has since become my a part of my life. But I wasn’t content with flirting with the barrel organ for the sake of a nostalgic sound. I came to the notice of barrel organ maker Wolfgang Brommer and his partner Heinz Jäger from Waldkirch, a traditional centre for musical boxes. They invited me to do some new arrangements for this intrument. Since then I think of myself as belonging to the modern side of the barrel organ revival. I recorded a CD with my own arrangements of some Mozart arias, followed by a second CD “Drehorgel goes classic” with piano, guitar, and string quartet. In my programme “Als das Singen noch geholfen hat” (When singing was still helpful”) a collection of texts and songs on food, drink, love and digestion, the organ is allowed to play samba and swing, which I accompany on clarinet and accordeon with my other hand. You can do that sort of thing with the barrel organ. Playing the barrel organ on stage has really been a liberating experience for me. When I play the flute I have to keep my eyes glued on the notes. But when standing behind the barrel organ I can connect much better with the audience. The effect on stage is amazing. People are always telling me that they would never have believed how much the barrel organ can achieve in the concert hall, whether in the USA with piano (MBSI anniversary meeting – Music Box Society International), in Japan with harp (International Soka Harp Festival) or in Europe with a symphony orchestra (Badisches Staatorchester Karlsruhe).
The barrel organ provides the right music for my Wilhelm Busch programme as well as for a song sequence about the social history of the German forest. In 2005 I was able to demonstrate a technically clever hurdy-gurdy together with the master organ maker Wolfgang Brommer at the Expo in Japan. This organ is not just crowned by battery of moving figures. Other instrumentalists can activate bells, drums and other things making sounds on it by means of balloons and tubes. My job was to recruit an orchestra from the innocent spectators at the Expo and to conduct them on stage after a rehearsal. Two months later we were back in Japan, as the Year of Germany was also running at that time. In this context I was able to present my children’s musical “Die Bremer- und andere Stadtmusikanten” (The Buskers of Bremen and elsewhere***) to some playgroup children, in Japanese at that, which was a real challenge for me. This year we are going to China (Peking, Shanghai, Nanjing) and Romania (Iasi)
