News

12/12/2017 - 18:44
Advent Calendar, Door 12

Musical Advent Calendar, door 12: On June 17 the fabulous piano quartet TASTISSIMO played the premiere of my ten-minutes-piece THE CIRCLE in the long night of music in Oldenburg. Part of Tastissimo is my old friend Ronald Poelman, whom I know since 1984 and who since then has encouraged me to compose. Unfortunately, there is no recording of THE CIRCLE yet, but Ronald has recorded some pieces I wrote for our Saxophone/Piano-duet in 1984. So here you can hear how I sounded with 18 years. Only the saxophone is missing. The photo above shows Ronald and me during our rehearsals for our concert THE ART OF FUGUE in 1989. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJmD56blUYY

12/11/2017 - 21:40
Musical Advent Calendar, Door 11

Musical Advent Calendar, Door 11: From March to June Robert Lewinkse and Sebastian Rühmann created this wonderful new website - including the brandnew categories VIDEO, CD, BIO, Newsletter, and a complete French version. You can see a photo of them above. Dear Robert, dear Sebastian, many thanks for you patience, skills, ideas and competence, I am really happy about the site!

12/08/2017 - 10:28
Door 8

Advent Calendar, Door 8: On May 7 the Berliner Blockflötenorchester under the conduct of Simon Borutzki played a fantastic Premiere of Jabal Ram, my first arabic piece, during the festival Neuköllner O-Töne. They played it also on July 16 in Berlin, on the big Jubilee concert in November - and in October they won a second prize with it at the Open Recorder Days of Amsterdam! And I have to say, I was really impressed by their performance. So I am very happy they will record it on CD in January. In the same time I will write a second and third movement!

12/07/2017 - 14:35
Door 7

Musical Advent Calendar, door 7: End of April I gave my second workshop about my African Recorder Music at Mollenhauer in Fulda, and as you can see on the photo above and posted on Facebook today, we had lots of fun. My biggest thanks, to Top-Organizer Susi Höfner and the one and only Nik Tarasov. My next workshop in Fulda will be on the weekend of 16th and 17th of June 2018!

12/05/2017 - 22:45
Musical Advent Calendar, door 5

Musical Advent Calendar, door 5: The whole March I spent composing my very first piece for Symphony Orchestra called TIMKAT. That is the highest religious and national celebration in Ethiopia. It is about the baptism of Christ. Three days hundreds of thousands, well in the whole country millions of people are marching, dancing, chanting and singing in and along the streets, dressed in magnificent clothes, mainly in white and gold. I experienced it one year ago in Addis Abeba myself, and it was simply overwhelming. I tried to catch the characters of joyful celebration, endless procession and religious solemnity in the piece. I wrote it for the composition competition of the Lietze Orchestra Berlin, which I, unfortunately, did not win, so it still waits for its premiere. If you have any suggestions which orchestra might be interested, please let me know!

12/04/2017 - 21:15
Musical Advent Calendar, Door 4

Advent Calendar, Door 4: On March 12 the Ensemble Pipelife presented their second Album TIDES AND TUNES in Karlsruhe. On this Album they recorded the 16 Variations on an Irish Jig (The Swallowtail Jig) that I had composed for them. A great concert, a great CD. I was very touched and happy. Thank you Gritli Kohler-Nyvall, Annegret Friede, Andrea Bub, Kirsten Christmann and Susanne Dick! You can hear the theme and the first four variations in a video from the video collection of this website. You can even buy the Album on this website, look up under CDs :-)

12/03/2017 - 21:49
Advent Calendar, door three

Advent Calendar, door three: In February Tom Beets invited me for five days to co-teach in one of the famous recorder courses in beautiful Lyme-Régis in Cornwall, England. I learned a lot there! For example, that British people can easily be as enthusiastic as people from Spain or Subsaharan Africa, that the British fog is not a cliché and that not ALL British people are obsessed with rugby and soccer. Some also love to look for million-year-old dinosaur bones. Read the full story plus photos on Facebook!

12/02/2017 - 20:06
Musical advent calendar, door two

Advent Calendar, door 2: On of the most moving moments of the year was definitely the first concert in my hometown Hamburg, that was dedicated to my works, on February 11 in a wonderful church in Hamburg-Volksdorf. The concert was initiated by the Flutes en bloc, the trio that has played, recorded and promoted my pieces now for 26 years. It was a special joy that my old professor from the music university, Christoph Schönherr, was in the audience as well as my old friend Michael Krebs, who is now one of the most famous and succesful piano comedians of the country. He took the photos I posted on Facebook today (link below). Thank you, Michael!

12/01/2017 - 02:30
Musical Advent Calendar, Door 1

Advent Calendar, Door 1: Like last year I want to present some highlights of the year in my musical advent calendar. I start with the latest news: The recorder orchestra of the faboulous Tsai-yen Chen has won the first round of the Taiwan Recorder Orchestra competition - with a Divertimento from Mozart and the second and third movement of my 4th African Suite Vitambo vya moyo! We had the chance to work on the pieces together during my workshop in Hsinchu on the first of July. You can watch their performance in the Hsinchu City hall at November 21 in a video I posted on Facebook (see button below). The second movement, Kinyongo (Melancholy), starts at 4:15, Jamboree (celebration of joy) starts at 7:34. Please notice that they play everything by heart! My congratulations to all the talented young players, to wonderful Tsai-Yen, and I wish you all good luck for the final next march!

11/17/2017 - 21:22
Braunschweig

Yesterday the Recorder Orchestra RECORDING GENERATIONS performed the first movement of my African Suite No. 21 TOMO TOMO during their concert in the big hall of the state theatre of Braunschweig. They just won the First Prize in the Category Ensemble in Trossingen with Vivaldi, Meijering and my piece. It was fantastic!