Christopher Franke

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Christopher Franke (* 6. April 1953 in Berlin as Christopher Franke ) is a musician and was a member of the group Tangerine Dream .

life and work

He studied classical music and composition at the Berlin Conservatory . At the time he was heavily influenced by composers such as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen and was active as a drummer in rock and jazz with the group Agitation Free from 1966.

Together with the Swiss composer Thomas Kessler , Franke set up a recording studio at the music school. The improvisation music courses that they later carried out in it became known as the Berlin School for Electronic Music . Franke met the artist Edgar Froese in Berlin , who founded the group Tangerine Dream in 1967 . Franke initially joined the group as a drummer, followed by Peter Baumann in 1973 . The British Melody Maker praised Franke's work on the Moog synthesizer as groundbreaking and groundbreaking in 1974.

In 1980 Franke's first solo title Chimes & Chains appeared as part of the Box A Decade Of Dreams . The album excerpt edited by Franke, The Girl on the Stairs , gained great popularity through the crime scene TV crime thriller of the same name in 1982 and was awarded a gold record as a single. Until Franke left, Tangerine Dream toured almost all over the world.

In 1988 Franke left Tangerine Dream and spent some time in Spain, where he devoted himself to his own musical ideas. In 1990 Franke ended up doing some work for the American film industry in Los Angeles , where he settled and opened a second recording studio. In 1991 he founded the Berlin Film Symphony Orchestra (BSFO). After several films, his first own album, Pacific Coast Highway , came out in the same year . He gave his only live concert after Tangerine Dream on October 9, 1991 in London. The concert, which was released in 1993 as a live CD The London Concert , he played at the Royal Apollo Theater together with Edgar Rothermich (aka Richard E. Roth), who is the producer and sound engineer for all of his solo projects and film music after 1990.

In 1993 Franke founded his own record label Sonic Images . Again he created film soundtracks, e.g. B. for the Roland Emmerich film Universal Soldier , music for television series, z. B. for Raven and Pacific Blue , and released albums like Klemania or Perry Rhodan - Pax Terra . By the year 2000 Franke composed music for around 25 films, TV series and commercials. Franke became known to a larger audience as the composer of the soundtrack for the TV science fiction series Babylon 5 , which he created almost entirely himself.

Together with Konstantin Wecker, Christopher Franke composed the songs for the musical Ludwig² , which premiered in 2005 at the Neuschwanstein Festival Hall in Füssen .

Discography

  • Pacific Coast Highway (1991)
  • London Concert (1993)
  • New music for films Vol.1 (1993)
  • Klemania (1993)
  • Perry Rhodan Pax Terra (1996)
  • The Celestine Prophecy (1996)
  • Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love (1996)
  • Enchanting Nature (1996)
  • Transformation of Mind (1997)
  • Epic (1999)
  • New music for films Vol.2 (2000)
  • Ludwig² - The Musical (2005)

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Franke, Christopher
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Franke, Christoph (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician, pioneer of electronic music
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin