1987 I moved to Munich and started to study Sinology at Munich University. It was then, that I eventually hired a bass teacher for about 6 months, who got me into basic Jazz techniques, Jazz harmonies and scales. Also shortly after moving to Munich, I purchased a keyboard, a drum computer and a small 4-track cassette recorder and started to produce my first multi-track recordings.
To improve my Chinese, I moved to the city of Tainan in Southern Taiwan in 1990 and attended language courses at the university. By chance I bumped into an expat band in one of the local instrument stores, and - as the bass player was about to leave - could join this band, Identity Crisis, on bass. Unlike most other foreign bands I came to know in Taiwan, the three Americans ( Dennis Rea on guitar, Tom Vest on drums and Bryce Whitwam ..s) performed original music, for the most part composed and arranged by Dennis. Dennis became one of the most influential musicians I ever had the pleasure to play with, and participation in Identity Crisis definitely broadened my musical perception. In April 1991, Identity Crisis had the chance to tour mainland China (Beijing and Chengdu), and we got in close contact with the emerging Chinese rock scene and its most prominent exponent Cui Jian. Back in Taiwan, I started to make a living playing bass in one of the demimonde etablissements of Tainan’s night live, which in the end got me kicked out of the country in September 1991, as I was playing and earning money lacking the necessary work permit.
I returned to Munich and graduated from university in 1995. In 1996, I got the chance to work for the renowned German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, acting as assistant to the local chief editor in Beijing. As I still had good friends in the music scene from the time spent there in 1991, I found myself engaged as studio bass player for two Chinese pop productions and found a nice side job as bass teacher at the one and only music school for pop and rock music at that time, Midi school of music - in fact quite a challenging job, as I had to teach a class of about 20 bass students of completely different playing levels in Chinese. Also at that time, I came to know Chinese rock singer Luo Qi (who now lives in Berlin) and jammed with her on various occasions.
Since my return to Munich in the summer of 1996, I have been playing in various bands of different styles ranging from standard Jazz to Cover Rock to modern Arabic Pop music (Rai) in Munich and Berlin. I also expanded my recording facilities from my old 4-tracker first to an 8-track cassette recorder - later used in combination with an Atari and Cubase -, and finally bought my first PC and music production software in 1999. The vast musical possibilities using the computer got me more and more into music production and electronic music, and I released two Big Beat tracks on Munich underground compilations.
Fascinated by the music of Nils Petter Molvaer and his elegiac combination of Electronic music and Jazz, I started to develop and produce tracks in this musical direction, which finally led to the founding of my Electro-Jazz project Chekov . I also bought an upright bass and an electric upright, though I do not practice enough to be really good on either of them.
In 2005, my former Taiwan bandmate Dennis Rea contacted me from Seattle with the news, that he was planning to be back in Taiwan for a small tour for 2 weeks with the band Jetlegr. As he planned to do the trip mostly with musicians from Seattle, I decided to bring Chekov on stage on this occasion, although the project was still basically an unperformable, merely studio-based one-man-show with lots of sounds and loops coming from my laptop. Therefore I bought a midi foot controller, did some rearrangements and programming in Ableton Live, and finally was able to perform the tunes live with bass and laptop, which could now be triggered via the foot controller. For the shows in Taiwan, Dennis agreed to join in on guitar, and eventually Jetlegr drummer Olli Klomp also participated in the Chekov concerts in Taiwan.
Being back in Munich after this anew Taiwan experience, which proved that the Chekov tunes could be performed live, I rearranged the tracks again, took out some rhythm loops, activated my old friend and impressive Jazz guitar player Gerd Mendel, sax player Bernd Detzel and drummer Daniel Brates (by now replaced by drummer Daniel Wehr) to form the current setup of Chekov . At the moment I am working on final tracks of the tunes, and I hope to have the first Chekov CD out soon.
For April 2008, another reunion of the old Taiwan bandmates Dennis Rea, Volker Wiedersheim (keys) and myself supported by drummer Olli Klomp is planned under the band name Ting Bu Dong . See tour dates above!
For more information on my person, check out my homepage at www.atze-ton.de/atze
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