MARTINBÖHMER

Hi, I’m Martin!

I write my pieces in Leipzig, in a walk-through room between the hallway and the balcony, the kind of room you would normally just pass through. I don’t have a studio. In summer, the door to the courtyard stays open, children sometimes play downstairs, and the street is only a low background hum. It is wonderful.

Almost everything I write begins on a felted piano. Felt sits between hammer and string, taking the hardness out of the attack — what remains is a soft, close sound, often with the mechanics audible too. This is where I feel most at home. On an open grand piano, I would choose different notes, and my pieces would certainly carry a different energy. I play without a fixed tempo, without force. I try, in some small way, to stretch time and stay inside the moment for as long as possible. And to express feelings and emotions I could not otherwise put into words.

I came to the piano late, and by way of a few detours. First there were years on drums and an adolescence in which I expressed myself more through paint and images on trains than through sound. It all really began with a piece by Yann Tiersen that I worked out by ear on a keyboard I actually hated. I did not own a piano for a long time. I only began playing seriously when rehearsal rooms first became available to me during my time in the United States.

My first finished piece is called “gisela”, after my grandmother. She brought me to music and, sadly, never heard the finished piece. But I am sure that, wherever she is now, she has found a way to stream it.

I write every piece for myself first. What I love most is that people then find something completely different in it — a memory, an image, a quiet moment in the day — and that is an incredibly fulfilling feeling. Many people listen to this music in the background, while working or falling asleep. That is probably the greatest compliment I could imagine.

My music is released by Klangspot Nu Classical. An album is in the works. You are warmly invited to be part of the journey.