Composer, pianist and music director Paul Wallfisch is known for his work across film, theatre and rock music. Starting in New York’s 1980s East Village music scene, Paul founded the band Botanica, who released eight albums. He has a long-running collaboration with Little Annie and has also performed and recorded with Swans, Firewater, Love & Rockets, Syl Sylvain, Stiv Bators and Marissa Nadler.
Paul was Music Director at Stadttheater Dortmund from 2010–2015, and since 2020 he has been Music Director at Vienna’s Volkstheater, where his recent scores include Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real, a collaboration with Calexico.
At the Kiezsalon Dana Schechter and Paul Wallfisch present their new collaborative project, the soundtrack to Kleist prizewinner Wolfram Lotz’s play Die Politiker. Recorded live at the Volkstheater, Vienna, the surrealistic, doom-metal, existential romp soundtrack will be released by Vienna label Trost Records in May 2025.
FACTS
1: A victory a day keeps suicide away.
2: The questions that can be answered aren’t worth asking.
3: “Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.” ~ Guy Davenport
QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Making something.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I was born into a family of musicians. It was almost odd to be doing anything else.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Muswell Hillbillies, The Kinks
Blood on the Tracks, Dylan
Coney Island Baby, Lou Reed
David Johansen, David Johansen
Goldberg Variations (1980), Glenn Gould
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Tempelhof, where I landed with my parents as a little kid; Bluethner pianos everywhere; Stoking the coal oven in the 80s; swimming in the Teufelsee.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
My backyard, 153rd street, Harlem.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I don’t understand the question. But if I were deaf, I’d read and write even more than I do now. And go to Swans and Sunn O))) shows.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
I’ll give you three:
Michelle Gurevich, Ecstasy in the Shadow of Ecstasy
James Johnston & Steve Gullick, Everybody’s Sunset
Wendy Eisenberg, The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
I’ll give you two:
The poet Fred Seidel
Anne Imhof
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Impossible to pick one.
Other Voices festival with Angela McCluskey, Dingle, Ireland 2005
Satyricon, Portland Oregon, with Congo Norvell, 1995
Little Annie & Paul Wallfisch, Serralves Museum, Porto 2009
With Swans, Roundhouse, London 2017
Botanica & Firewater together with Joe Frank, Viper Room, Los Angeles 2000
As a spectator there are 4–and only four–that clearly changed my life:
The Ramones / The Real Kids, Anherst, Massachusetts, 1978
The Kinks, Amherst MA, 1979
Suicide, Irving Plaza, New York, 1980
Swans, Elysee Montmartre, Paris 1987
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Insofar as technology multiplies the ease of stumbling upon upon happy accidents–a lot. But really, technology has absolutely nothing to do with the creative process. It has to do with the realization of the creative impulse.
11. What can we expect from your Kiezsalon concert?
This will be the 2nd time Dana and I have played this material outside of the context of the theatrical production it was created for. Each time will be deeper, more dynamic and more extreme. Lots of happy accidents and a nod to the animals next door…
