I come from a very musical household and started playing a lot of instruments very early. At the age of 12, when puberty kicked in, I discovered rock’n’roll and threw all those classical instruments away and started composing. From then on, I was hooked. But in those days there was no serious school of modern music in Germany, so I went to Berkley College of Music in Boston. I was one of two Germans there.

I returned to Frankfurt as a passionate jazz sax player in the tradition of be-bop, Charlie Parker and so on. But in Germany in the 1980s that was a deadly sin. Everyone else was doing new wave. So, on the one hand I was the Frankfurt jazz wunderkind, but on the other hand I started being a session keyboard player. I started investing in all the latest technology – Emulator, PPG Wave Systems, Oberheim Matrix 12 and so one – that nobody else had, so I got a lot of studio jobs.

Eventually composing and arranging became more important than playing, and because Frankfurt is such a virile advertising city I found myself drawn to that field. And out of that a studio grew, and then there were sound engineers and a booker and so forth. It grew organically. And now at Pearls Music we are editing film and doing colour correction… everything sort of grew together. More powerful computers make everything much better, but that also means that imagination and know-how are becoming more important.

The workshop in Luxembourg was something of an exclusive. Usually I hate these things. But it was really fun. The participants really joined in and we created a sound logo for Design Friends. I was impressed by what the Design Friends team has done here. I wish we had something like this in Germany, it is a much better quality here. Luxembourg is a small country, but everyone seems to work together, to help each other.

What I did notice in my short time here is the architecture; even the social housing has architectural quality. There is money and taste here. And acoustically it is a very peaceful city; not quiet, but peaceful. A really nice spot.