I think am in love with Volker Bertelmann….

I have been listening to Foreign Landscapes all day/night.  It’s so emotional, there is something about it that makes me feel more creative and empowered (or maybe that is all of my good juju blessed candles I got from the voodoo shop?)  Today was also the day that my apartment started to look like a place that someone could actually inhabit.  In the future, I suspect there will be a strong mental association between the two.

Happy.

Listening to a piece by Hauschka can be deceiving: What sounds like an ensemble of musicians and instruments is just one man, performing at one piano. His real name is Volker Bertelmann, and he hails from Dusseldorf, Germany, where he works with his “prepared piano.” He wrests disruptive sounds from the instrument’s 88 keys by outfitting the strings or mallets with objects such as ping-pong balls, aluminum foil and leather. 

Volker Bertelmann is a classically trained composer/pianist from Germany who currently resides in Düsseldorf. Having studied classical piano for ten years, his work as Hauschka is based upon a playful exploration of the possibilities of the ‘prepared’ piano – a disruptive intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned instrument: by clamping wedges of leather , felt or rubber between the strings; preparing the hammers with aluminium paper or rough films; placing crown corks on the strings, weaving guitar strings around the piano’s guts, or pasting them down with gaffa tape – his resulting tracks are composed both originally and charmingly. The results are vivid, unconventional pieces made in a spirit of playful research-enthusiasm.

<3

<3