Born on a spectacular clear and sunny easter monday in Wittlich … a small german town which … of course!!! … everybody out there would know.Discovering the piano as a kid and wanting to sound like Oscar Peterson CA managed to teach himself three chords (C/F/G) and started to play anything he could on top of that … preferably german children, folk and carneval tunes as well as Peter Kreuder compositions whose work left a big impact while stopping for a concert in the little town. From that day on it was getting even harder to separate the kid from the keyboard. And it didn't take too long until he was ready to come out with his first ground breaking live appearences playing excuisite selections of the booze song book and creating ambiente for parents and their friends to get pissed.
At the point when finally classical lessons became part of the scedule it probably was already much too late for any kind of standard education.
Luckily not very much later he found himself introduced to a little bit of left hand boogie woogie accompaniment which still could be managed with the same three chords and at the same time would sound already a little bit more like jazz although not quite like Oscar Peterson yet.
At the age of 11 and 12 he was spending a lot of time playing the Blues on the piano and singing selfmade lyrics to it … mostly in german because the english original was not yet to be understood. Vince Weber was a big reference here. And it also was in those days when the second big stage experience appeared opening up for Albert Mangelsdorf.
Later on as a teenager who didn’t like any kind of homework and therefore obviously also disliked his classical piano lessons he had the fortune to participate in a pretty good local blues band as the baby of the gang which took him out to play the local venues and hippie kind of open air festivals.
During all that long period of being a youngster he was passing through a pretty rough time (thiteen years in a row) of intensive studies in patience at the local school which he was able too leave in such miraculous ways with a solid mediocre graduation which again could have opened up doors for a possible solid academic career and a secure and neetly organized successful life in peace.
Unfortunately that was never supposed to happen. Instead not long before leaving school he got hold of a small piece of paper with the chart of Mal Waldrons „Soul Eyes“ on it and all of a sudden was exposed to the fantastic existance of something like a G7b9 and a maj7 chord. This opened up a whole new perspective and artistic conception and finally led him to become a member of the Landers Jugend Big Band Rheinland Pfalz where for the first time he was able to play music that sounded like jazz and at the same time learn from Georg Ruby, one of the directors of the orchestra, that a human being in those days could even do that as a profession.
That’s how he finally managed to stepped out into the big wide world and study at the Musikhochschule Köln with most wonderful teachers like Frank Wunsch and John Taylor. Well … I think at this point the reader should be informed that all of this was taking place a long time ago.
Since then CA has been digging deep into many diffrent musical styles as well as their ethnic roots and particularities.
Starting off as a jazz pianist and working with major voices in the field of jazz he also has always been an at least a little bit more than decent singer as well as composer, arranger, performer and topliner of his own projects who has been venturing out to latin american, brazilian and contemporary streams of popular music.
The new CD "bossa no piano" (2CDs-www.phonector.com) demonstrates CA's outstanding interpretation and vision of brasilian music. Also available: CA solo piano - "portaits in black & white" (2CDs-www.phonector.com), CA trio - "featuring Ed Schuller & Ernst Bier" (www.phonector.com)
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