Hauschka at Volksbuehne Berlin / Friday, 19.09.2014

Following the release of his new album “Abandoned City” on City Slang earlier in the year, Volker Bertelmann alias Hauschka returns to Berlin for a concert at the Volksbühne in September. Wooden sticks, pieces of felt, tape strips, table-tennis balls – with great inventiveness and various everyday objects, the successful pianist and composer Hauschka creates an unexpected world of sounds with the piano.

Hauschka | Noise Is Music
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=aDdImjFjdRw

The resulting percussive or rustling sounds, which make one assume the usage of drums and electronic devices, give the atmospherically dense, rhythm-based compositions of the Düsseldorf-based musician a lyrical quality. As ever on can look forward to another one of his unique performances.

Hauschka | Live improvisation
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=43Z4yljYY_c

For “Abandoned City”, which was released by the great label City Slang in March, he has drawn inspiration from ghost towns – around 2,500 of such abandoned places exist world-wide. It is the images and stories of these deserted settlements, in which the pianist has discovered moods which he knows from the process of concentrated artistic creativitiy. “Beauty, transitoriness, melancholy, and absurdity – in the abandoned places already reclaimed by nature, I encounter a metaphor for what happens inside of me.” After experimenting with beats and almost danceable rhythms on his last album, his new work both draws lines back to his earlier releases and explores new territory in the deeper layers of his sound creations.