Tassilo - Evocations from the Wilderness

I was surrounded by music from the very beginning. My mother was a music teacher in Germany, where I was born. So it was only natural that I started playing instruments early in life and I never stopped. The only formal training I received was for the first two instruments, recorder and violin. When I was inspired by an instrument, I wanted to play it too. I taught myself guitar, where it was the finger picking style that originally attracted me; the piano, where I like Bach, Beethoven and Ragtime. On my first visit to Canada I heard a banjo and I fell in love with that banjo sound. I taught myself bluegrass. Finger picking on the banjo has greatly improved my dexterity on the guitar. The violin and the recorder were used now to play celtic melodies. I started composing for the guitar. All styles started to mingle on all instruments. The music I composed in the Canadian wilderness is technically influenced by everything that I played before. From classic to jazz, from folk to ragtime, from celtic to latin, bluegrass to Spanish, all of these forces are at work. My body has something of a memory. That's the backdrop for the process of composing. The process of composing goes like this: I am bathing in sound, showering myself. It is not my intellect commanding my hand movement. It is more like my body is doing it on it's own. My hands and muscles have a memory. They just play around and sometimes I hear something that feels so good. Then I try to repeat what feels so good. My body keeps playing around, ah, there it was again. I keep playing around till I can do at will what feels so good. This is timeless and anxiety free. There is no concept of time, no concept of thought, no word. The mind, or intellect, is at rest. After I can do it at will again, and again, then, and only then, do I involve him my intellect. He figures out what note, what key, what cord, what beat. That's what I write down. The intellect struggles most with expressing in words 'what feels so good' to give it titles. The titles reflect experiences of mine. Don't get hung up in the words, go with the feeling. So I am playing tunes that got created because it felt so good to me. It never made sense, verbal sense. I hope my music will evoke in you responses from your feeling body without the intellect being involved too much. The overactive mind should have a break.

1) Guitarrero
2) Pastime
3) Dance of the Sun
4) Homecoming
5) Susan's Request
6) Going to Town
7) Vita
8) Jazzy
9) Sneaking Around
10) Contemplations
11) Pressing on
12) Beethoven
13) Mist
14) Brink of the Rocks
15) Whitecaps
16) Opus 21
17) Waves
18) Back to the Wilderness
19) Highland
20) Howard's Favorite
21) Finger Rag
22) A New Start