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Kai Schumacher, piano
If there's something that has nothing to do with him and his music, it's "crossover", a word that suggests something meets something. With Kai Schumacher, nothing meets nothing because everything is always there. The more different, the more familiar. There is Classical music, he studied at the Folkwang University of the Arts, there is punk and pop and minimal art, Dadaism and Duisburg, dancefloor and avantgarde. Schumacher's solo piano performances lay it all bare. The keyboard he plays is the same as ever. The mysterious thing about this music is that it never pretends for a moment to hold a secret. It ́s sobriety is striking, it's what jumps out at you and puzzles you.
As an arranger and performer with a focus on contemporary American piano music, Kai Schumacher has released several albums since 2009 with works by Frederic Rzewski, John Cage, George Crumb, Tom Johnson, Steve Reich and others. On his album “Rausch” (2019), however, the focus is entirely on his own compositions for the first time. Schumacher avoids overdubs and any use of electronics. Instead, he has prepared his instrument analogously and plays with acoustic perception using the “weird” tones of the piano. Now, his upcoming album "Tranceformer" (release September 29th, 2023) takes this sonic exploration to a new level. Patterns interweave, shift, and collide, making the music a perpetual transformation that shapes itself uniquely in each listener's ears.
Together with the singer-songwriter Gisbert zu Knyphausen, Kai Schumacher released the album “Lass irre Hunde heulen” in 2021, on which they reinterpret selected songs by Franz Schubert with a chamber ensemble. Their approach is far from traditional, without classic etiquette and tailcoats, but authenticly unpretentious and with a fiery heart. Furthermore, Schumacher embarks on a captivating journey with the "SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet" - their program “Goldberg Nights” combines excerpts from Bach’s Goldberg Variations with other nocturnal music spanning four centuries, from otherworldly romantic dreamscapes to ecstatic club nights.
Concert tours as a soloist and chamber music partner have taken Kai Schumacher across Europe, Asia and South and North America. Since 2015 he has been teaching piano at the Folkwang University of the Arts.
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