Personal Realbook
On the 23rd of December 2008 I had the idea of a new compositional project.
I was planning to write one piece of music a day during a whole year.
The first time I heard about such an idea was when my teacher Peter Madsen was introducing me to the great brazilian multi-instrumentalist and composer Hermeto Pascoal, who himself had written a “Calendar of Sound” in 1996. So in this project everybody has his “own personal” composition, depending on his date of birth.
You will find traditional pieces, very modern ones, conceptional pieces, graphic scores and some of them will even seem more like “educational concepts” rather than actual pieces.
In April 2010, after writing all 365 pieces into the computer I finally released my "Personal Realbook" with over 600 pages of music. In an appendix I also added some older pieces of mine, dating from the years 2005 to 2008.
On the 28th of April I organized a Bookpresentation in Bregenz/Austria. I invited all my friends from the Vorarlberg area to play a tune out of this book with me...
From the beginning of my project a big goal was to create quite a range of different pieces. But now, having finished my project, I realized the difficulty of that task.
Being obliged to have an creative idea every day provides a big danger of repeating oneself. Especially after I had written hundreds of pieces, I began to feel that I had said everything.
However, this point I found specifically exciting. Having said everything, feeling empty and not having any ideas left forced me to try out new things and to push myself to my limits every time.
From my point of view at least, I think I managed to write quite a diversity of pieces
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Teaching
I’m giving workshops to students all over the world and I’m also giving privat lessons once in a while. Not only on piano playing but I also did very specific workshops on “inside piano techniques” and more general workshops on the “music business” for example.
In 2008 I was a pianoprofessor at the MIGROS Jazzschool in St.Gallen (CH) for one year.
Find here a litte tutorial video on some piano exercises:
Teacher
Peter Madsen has been my piano teacher from 2001-2010 and I learned almost everything I know about music from him
Finally I had the time to do a long interview with him - you can watch it here - hope you enjoy!