Thomas Arens

Thomas Arens (born November 27, 1960 in Siegen ) is a German drummer, band leader, composer, textbook author and entertainer.

Thomas Arens, 2009

Life

He started taking piano lessons at the age of 14 and soon switched to the drum set. He studied jazz drums at the Cologne University of Music and Dance .

Band leader, comedian

He founded and directed various jazz groups, including Die Fußgänger. In his compositions for this band he set his expressionist German texts to music.

In 1992 he became head of the René Combo, which he renamed Thomas Arens Combo in 2000. Since then he has been active with this band as one of the few drumming band leaders in the Cologne session carnival (approx. 50 carnival sessions annually).

The Thomas Arens Combo developed a total of seven shows for the Lifta company's marketing events . Since 1999 she has performed over 150 appearances with these shows. Thomas Arens' comedy interludes play an important role.

In 2010 the live CD was released, on which one of these shows can be heard in full.

Composer, dj

In 1988 he worked with the film music composer Wolfgang Hamm on the music for the silent film series Les Vampires (12 episodes, 6½ hours of music). As a result, various film scores a. a. for DW-Transtel, VideoVision, FFM and Alexander Gray.

1989–1990: Die Fußgänger - For this project he composed and wrote all the tracks. Two records were released.

Since 2018 he has published his compositions under the name Inscription Aura. His preferred genre is ambient, downtempo, singer-songwriter. Since 2013 he has also performed as a DJ.

Drummer, textbook author

His preoccupation with rhythm theory led to the publication of his book Number and Rhythmics in 2000 . It culminated in the discovery of the six basic rhythmic movements.

In 2004 he wrote the first exercises for drum set beginners . In this book, some of his new ideas on rhythm education appeared for the first time, which have since proven themselves in drum lessons: u. a. Chromatic tempo , a sophisticated music reading learning system and drum set notation without staves.

In addition to the drum set , Thomas Arens also plays various percussion instruments ( conga , tavil , frame drums, etc.).