Hauschka is the alias of German pianist / composer Volker Bertelmann, who currently resides in Dusseldorf, Germany. He studied classical piano for ten years, but his work as Hauschka is based upon a playful exploration of the possibilities of the 'prepared' piano — a playfully disruptive intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it. With the aid of his interventions, the piano becomes as much a machine for generating rhythms as it does for melody. 

 

In addition to album and performance collaborations with celebrated violinist Hilary Hahn, drummer Samuli Kosminen (Iceland's Mum) and Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, Hauschka has continued to work on numerous other projects, most notably in the fields of film, theatre, dance and art. He's contributed to various film soundtracks (one for winner of the 2007 Akira Kurosawa Short Film Award, Blotsky, (in which he also starred,) and four film scores - including Doris Dorrie's, Gluck, nominated for Best Film Score at the German Film Prize in 2012. His stage work includes 2006's remix of Wagner's Parcifal (in collaboration with Stefan Schneider) for Berlin's Hebbel Theatre and in 2011 he composed an 18 minute overture for Rittberger's Puppen, part of the 2011/12 theatrical season at Dusseldorf's Schauspielhaus.

 

Always unpredicable, HAUSCHKA continues to offer only one certainty; that the next step he takes will no doubt be as unexpected as the direction from which he has come.