The story behind my first album

Hello dear blog readers :-)

This is a post that I have wanted to do for a long time so now here it comes! As most of you know (or will learn when visiting this website, my instagram channel or one of my concerts) I have released an album with my very own solo piano compositions last year. This was a great opportunity for me and is something I am still very proud of. I did not exactly plan to work towards an entire album when I was playing on my piano in my room all this time, but somehow things fell into place very nicely over the past years.

I have always been drawn towards the piano since I was a teenager and wanted to learn how to play. But at that time I already took flute and singing lessons and taking piano lessons on top of that would have been a bit much and also too expensive. I couldn’t get myself to stop either playing the flute or singing (my favourite hobby at that time!) so I decided to buy an electric piano (a rather cheap one) with money from Christmas and my birthday when I was 17 years old and started to experiment with it myself.

There were some songs I loved that I wanted to play - I was really into Yann Tiersen at that time - and I knew how to read the treble clef from playing the flute and singing but I was (and still am) super slow in reading the bass clef which prevents me from playing the song in a tempo that is somewhere near the original :-D So the easier way for me was just to memorize the songs that I wanted to play. I spent a couple of months doing that (plus my singing teacher who also played the piano gave me some beginner’s lessons as well) until I moved out of my parents’ home half a year later.

I started studying medicine in Göttingen and took my electric piano with me. In the following years I gave up memorizing songs but started to invent my own little melodies on the piano instead. There were months when I didn’t play a lot and then there were months when I played several hours a day because I felt so happy playing that I couldn’t stop.

During those years my piano became a really good way to get a break from long studying hours and it also allowed me to still be creative which wasn’t part of my studies at all. At some point I even bought a real piano, over 100 years old, still kind of in tune and definitely good enough for me. I recorded a lot of little ideas and snippets on my phone during my study time, most of them stayed little and I managed to finish 3 or 4 songs.

Then my studies were over and I started a new life in Berlin. There was a time during COVID when I was unemployed as a doctor and looking for a cultural project I could be part of (in times when the access to cultural events was very limited). I found a group of lovely people in Munich around the musician and composer Axel Kroell with whom I organized an online benefit festival on a voluntary basis (mostly classical concerts but also other genres in different places around Munich that could be streamed online). I really enjoyed doing this for a few weeks and we managed to have a lot of beautiful concerts during Christmas time and were able to donate money for a good cause.

At the end of the festival Axel called me and offered me a day in his studio as a gift for my help. Hearing this I was absolutely excited and I am very thankful for this opportunity until today. A few months later I bought myself a new piano ( I had left my old one in Göttingen) and started playing again since I had missed the piano a lot. I also took some composition classes to finish some of the ideas I had. Luckily there was no rush on doing the studio day so I really took my time..

Three years (!!! :-D) later I had improved my piano and composition skills and finished 11 songs that I brought to the studio on that day. When I played the first notes on the grand piano and heard it’s soothing sound I immediately felt calm and I knew this was gonna be a successful recording session. I worked with Julian Collet as producer/recording engineer which was super easy, effective and all in all a great experience. We were very concentrated (not that easy when I didn’t have much sleep the night before because I felt so excited), it felt like we had a similar view on how to work through the songs and we managed to record all the pieces I brought. In the early evening I left with a heart full of joy, the next day Julian had mastered all my songs. Hearing my own music in beautiful quality is such a special feeling. I’m already looking forward to my next studio experience with new material wherever that may be!