Schallwelle Preisverleihung 2015

Yesterday, it was time again for the annual Schallwelle Preisverleihung, at the familiar location of the Zeiss Planetarium in Bochum, Germany. As part of the tradition, I went there again with Michel van Osenbruggen (Synth.nl).
Before, in between and after the ceremony, there always is enough opportunity to meet up with people, friends and fellow-musicians.

The evening consisted of three parts: the first part featured an excellent performance by Picture Palace music and the first part of the Awards ceremony. The second part consisted of a nice concert by René Splinter and friends and the distribution of the remaining Awards. And the third and final part was dedicated to the Lifetime Achievement Award, which was addressed to Edgar Froese. Due to Edgar's recent passing, this year's ceremony had emotional accents.

My band Free Arts Lab was on the pre-nomination list, but didn't reach the final selection of nominees, unfortunately.
See the entire list of winners and nominees here: http://www.schallwelle-preis.de/

I already did it in person yesterday, but again: Congratulations to all winners!

Then I also met up with Wolfram Spyra, and discussed about the "Planet of the Arps".
I wrote and recorded the first version of this ambient piece back in 2010, and performed it for the first time in 2012, as solo-concert on the same location as yesterday's Schallwelle Preisverleihung. From the very beginning of the evolution of this piece I had in mind that this should be a collaboration with Wolfram Spyra. Then, last year, at the Ruins of Brederode, Wolfram and his girlfriend (and half of Moon & Melody) Roksana Vikaluk, and me performed an excerpt of this piece, fully improvised, using elements from the original piece.
Although we made satisfying recordings of this performance, and this piece definitely might be worth sharing it with the world, I still feel the need to rework and release the entire original one-hour piece (instead of only the half of it, which we did so far). So hopefully there will finally be an opportunity to work on this somewhere this year!

Me, Thorsten Quaeschning and Eric van der Heijden.

And last but not least, we have a picture of three handsome long-haired men!

Edgar Froese

In 2008, on April 13th to be precisely, I did a performance at the E-Day Festival.
The festival was turned into Edgar Froese Day, because of the headlining electronic music legend.

Edgar Froese and his band in concert @ E-Day 2008 (c) Brian (pogofish).

This specific year I actually saw him perform twice. His only solo performance ever at the TU Eindhoven, and his appearance with Tangerine Dream at the Night of the Prog Festival at the Loreley amphitheatre.

Ron Boots & Friends did the first concert on this Edgar Froese Day. Ron, who also organises the E-Live and E-Day festivals on annual base and managed to book Tangerine Dream's front man for a 2,5 hours concert, must have experienced this edition as one of the highlights as organiser. In between this day's concerts I did mine. Besides the integral presentation of my new album "This Is Not The End", I also did an interpretation of Edgar's "Maroubra Bay".

After my performance I got to meet Edgar Froese in person. Because he was preparing for his concert, I spoke to him shortly and had the opportunity to let him autograph my "Aqua" cd. A special, but funny moment. A camera was recording, and without knowing each other he introduced me in front of the camera as his biggest fan from New Zealand. Which in fact I am not.

Edgar Froese @ E-Day 2008
(c) Brian (pogofish).

Although I lost interest in Edgar's and Tangerine Dream's output after 1990 (with a couple of exceptions), I can say the period before (1967-1990) did make a lot of sense to me, and indeed was groundbreaking for the overall evolution of (electronic) music. As well as he was a source of inspiration for my own musical development. And I can only agree with everyone who says he was, without any doubt, one of the most important pioneers of the electronic music genre.
And to learn about the prospect of a collaboration between Edgar Froese and one of my other heroes, Jean Michel Jarre (to probably see the light later this year) also makes me very exciting.

I didn't listen much to Tangerine Dream recently, but unconsciously I did play "Goblin's Club" (one of the albums after the 90's which could only catch me partially), last Tuesday. Which was Edgar's final day as living legend.
It once more did me realise that also legends aren't invincible.
May he live on in memories. Rest in peace.