How did you get into music?
Well, the way it was years ago…
there was a flute group in the church your parents put you into, you learn to read music notation, etc. and you get your first basic music theory. At some point I heard an accordion orchestra which I found exciting – I was about 6 or 7. So I learned the accordion. A little later I wanted to learn the guitar because my sister had started with it.
In the 5th/6th grade at school, we had wonderful music teachers who set up a school big band and a brass band. You received free lessons and the instruments were loaned out to the students. Later I really wanted to play the saxophone – I just thought it was a great instrument – but my parents didn’t have the money; they were already providing guitar and accordion lessons. At some point I was loaned an instrument – a clarinet which I also thought was cool. So I learned the clarinet and played in the school’s brass band.
When the drummer of the school big band graduated from high school, his position became vacant and I thought to myself – drums are actually really cool too. I took the school drums home and taught myself how to play them, so to speak, over the summer holidays. Then I took drummer’s place in the school big band for a while.
However, my desire to play the saxophone grew stronger over the years – David Sandborn was a player I admired a lot at that time. A tenor saxophone finally became available in our big band. So I learned tenor and a little later alto saxophone. Since I had already learned to play the clarinet, I got into it pretty easily.
And then there were the projects from our music teacher, who directed the school big band. He got the opportunity to revise the Kurt Tucholsky Chanson book for Rowohlt Verlag and discovered that many of these great texts had not yet been set to music. My music teacher founded the band “Tamerlan” (King of the Kyrgyz) and composed new music for the lyrics by Kurt Tucholsky that had not yet been set to music or arranged existing song material for a larger combo with wind instruments. “Tamerlan” was the first band project I was involved in.
I played my first gigs with this band when I was sixteen. My very first gig was in the town hall of Reinbek, which was also my first paid gig , from which I immediately bought an Otto Link mouthpiece for my tenor saxophone. We played many exclusive gigs for Rowohlt Verlag – mostly in libraries and bookshops and all over Germany. That was the beginning – the musical life slowly started to pick up speed. I was really fascinated by it all the colleagues with their various instruments etc. and I made the decision – I wanted to be a professional musician and I was just 16. I wanted to make a living from it. So I started practicing really hard as I wanted to study music. Well, I was going to least try to pass the entrance exam. I had to take a serious amount of lessons for that because up to that point I had always done everything autodidactic.
Since I had only played jazz and popular music up to that point, I now had to deal with classical material for saxophone for the entrance exam. So one thing led to another… A first big milestone was the production of the musical “CATS” in the Operettenhaus Hamburg. The requirements for “Cats” were baritone saxophone, clarinet and flute. I worked diligently and ambitiously on the Reed Part, helped out there for several years as a sub (stand in) and I learned a lot in this time.
It’s important to stick with it and to trust that the energy you put into it will last and pay off over time.
Hearing that, you've come a long way since your early days in the school band. Today you play in almost every big musical, great theatre productions and in well-known bands. What do you enjoy most?
Ah, that’s hard to say. It’s a lot of fun playing in bands especially when you are appreciated for your own sound, your own individual style.
In theatre and musical productions, the content is all predetermined. The doors will open for you when you get along with certain people or because you have a good command of the combination of instruments and you can also reproduce the given content professionally and as desired – for that you get a different form of recognition and respect, which I also like.
But the most fun, and of course the most exciting thing, is when exactly what is required of you is the ability to express yourself personally. That is simply awesome!
Reading your CV it’s evident you play an unbelievable number of instruments. That's an impressive achievement. In our conversation you revealed other interests - film music for example, what excites you about it?
It requires a different approach.
In the case of film music it is the artistic, creative aspect that comes from ones self that I find very fulfilling. I can fully utilise and draw from all my experience, music theory and my knowledge of all the different genres and instruments that I’ve been privileged to get to play over the years. All this, I feel resonates deep within me. Over the years it has helped keep my creative batteries charged.
For me, the main task of writing music for film is to create moods, to support moods. It’s a highly complex process, and also highly creative.
And it’s precisely this that I find so exciting.
If you consider the crises of the last few years, I have one last question: "How and where do you see your future?"
It would be great to be able to continue making a living by playing live with bands and in major musical and theatre productions in the years to come. When you play live you have to be really switched on – that’s what I like about it.
And of course there is a further creative aspect – my studio work.
You are not just an artist in the sense of being a musician, but also a sound engineer (recording and mixing ) and arranger. On top of that you have to know your way around a computer, and get to grips with many emerging features in the digital world – you’re constantly learning! I enjoy facing all of these challenges! We live in the digital age and new possibilities are constantly emerging – I see this as a great opportunity.
The latest crises have shown that when live-shows are cancelled – practically from one day to the next – you can and must break new ground with music. The possibilities offered by the digital world are open to everyone. It is up to us to discover and use them for ourselves. If you can open up markets and reach an audience and ultimately produce music that you can sell digitally and make a living from it – that would be something I could imagine doing.
Assuming of course, that one stays healthy as one gets older.
I wish you the best and thank you for this interview.
Sven Gordon Williams conducted the interview with Detlef Raschke in Hamburg on January 16, 2023.