From Beethoven and Free Jazz to Electronic Pop Music

At the age of 15, I earned my first money as a musician in a cover band that played tunes by “Earth Wind and Fire” and “Chicago”. At the age of 19, I began a 20-year career as a free jazz musician with the FMP label in Berlin.

Due to various irritations stemming from a confusing childhood of the post-war generation, I could not find confidence in my inner, emotional voice, and completed token studies in German and musicology on the side. When the music jobs got out of hand, I decided to actually make music my profession and start studying at the Folkwang Academy of Music. A classical degree in orchestral trumpet seemed like the best option.

However, working in various symphony orchestras could not warm me up for this job. Pop, Jazz and New Music suited my curiosity more. As a well-trained and very variable trumpeter, I became a sought-after freelancer in the international music scene. The distrust in the inner voice and the creative path, made me become more and more a performing trumpet player, until the passion completely gave way to the materialistic thinking of success.

In the last 5 years of this first musical career, I did about 300 gigs a year with well-known ensembles such as „Musique Vivante“, „Ensemble Modern“, „Starlight Express“, „Schauspielhaus Bochum,“ „Theatre Chaillot“ and many others. Then I collapsed due to overwork, and after a rehab I retrained as an information technologist because I couldn’t and didn’t want to listen to music any more.

Impending retirement gave me cause to recapitulate a professional life, and I didn’t like what I saw at all. Where had the dreams and emotions gone? Professional life seemed like a shell without value. So I went back to the beginning, and recognized the opportunity that was offered to a highly trained musician and information technologist in the new world of music with electronic music production. And I seized it.

No more compromises, no more servitude, but the living out of emotions that had been suppressed for years. Surprisingly, the probing doubt of the past years also disappeared, because for the first time in my life I liked my work comprehensively. It was a happy return of the inner child. What a miraculous coincidence at an advanced age!