Gerald Krampl - Wonder Way

Webpage: http://geraldkrampl.com

 

Location: Vienna, Vienna, Austria

 

Description:

 

Viennese pianist, composer of "Neo-Classical / Ambient Chamber Music", crossing over the boarders of Classic, Ambient and Minimalism, with also some ProgRock influences.

 

Press Release:

 

The new album WONDER WAY of Viennese pianist, keyboarder and composer Gerald Krampl marks a great step forward in his attempt of creating neo-classical/ambient chamber music, as he finally could this time record the music in collaboration with the fantastic viola and violin player Peter Sagaischek, original member of the Vienna Volksopern Orchestra. Peter will also from now on partner with Gerald for his future projects.

 

His fine natur instruments give the music now the dimension it deserves, and in comparison to Gerald’s last albums Lighthouse and Innocent Wasteland the sound became now less electronic, but gained a much more expressive classical touch. Still the music stays relatively minimalistic and very elemental, and is also this time sparely enhanced with electronic embellishments.

 

The songs on this album either reflect situations of life or of fantasy, or they were written in memory of gone. Of course there are still some reminiscences to Gerald’s former new age project Agnus Dei, as well as to his prog rock days with his bands Kyrie Eleison and Indigo, though most of his musical ideas arise these days out of his classical piano training background from his early days of youth. 

And though Gerald’s musical approach is since long very intimate and without any commercial thinking, most likely to be defined as neo-classical / ambient chamber music (comparable with artists like Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi etc.), he thankfully gets constantly worldwide appreciation from reknown classical music magazines, as well as from prog rock and new age/ambient journals and radios.

UK Publicity: TSM Promotions - Nicky Baldrian / Mail: twosidemoon.promo@ntlworld.com  

Some Press Quotes about the last albums:

"This is without a doubt the best deep listening recording I have heard for the whole entire year. Non-stop gorgeous compositions and not a dead spot anywhere to be heard." (ProgNaut – USA, „Lighthouse“)

 

This artistic creation, saturated with nostalgia and inner peace, is just the perfect thing to listen to the full reflection on the long autumn evenings when the darkness is outside the windows, and the only source of light is a flickering candle glow ..." (MWLZ – Poland, „Lighthouse“)

"There is an infinite sensitivity in the resonance of some chords or arpeggios of the music which is not minimalistic, but refined to the extreme to be a series of sketches suggestively filled with a serene melancholy." (Harmony Magazine – France, „Lighthouse“)

 

"This is cleverly done, with the ambient noises working nicely against the melanchloic and beautiful played piano." (Classic Rock Society – UK, „Innocent Wasteland“)

"I am overhelmed by this melancholic, fragile music of Gerald Krampl! Obviously 'Lighthouse' is far away from 'electropop', and I can strongly recommend this album." (Re-Flexion - Germany, „Lighthouse“)

 

While listening to the CD it can easily bring you memories of certain events that happened in your life, even though the music is new, but the whole vibe is just so strong and it really touches you." (Strutter'Zine – Netherlands, „Lighthouse“)

 

"Anyone on the lookout for the most beautiful song of the 21st century so far should cue up ‘Tomorrow Come What May’, Track 2 on this follow-up to Krampl's 2009 album Innocent Wasteland, then admit that Track 4, ‘In Better Days’, isn't far behind." (World Magazine – USA, “Lighthouse”)

 

"The opening track alone is an absolutely gripping musical event, and the entire album is an experience, something rare, and worthwhile, in music these days. Brilliant, at times unsettling and somewhat overhelming." (Acid Dragon – France, „Innocent Wasteland“)

"It is music for reflection and for returning – into life!" (Westzeit – Germany, „Innocent Wasteland“)

 

Biography:

Gerald Krampl's musical career started in his early youth in the 60s, by being trained in classical piano and music theory. In the 70s and 80s he formed two prog-rock bands, Kyrie Eleison and Indigo, which gained a high reputation worldwide in the prog-rock community. Gerald played keyboards and wrote all songs, and several LPs, CDs and singles were successfully released. The company IndigoMusic was founded by him in 1983, first mainly to market these own band works, but soon the rooster was expanded with various side projects ranging from disco to folk, which were produced in the also own studio for various major record companies.

 

After a break 1993 from the music business he started in 1999 together with his wife Hilde a new spiritual music project - Agnus Dei. Inspired by their yearlong experiences with Reiki (master degree), Runes, Blossoms and Meditation, they here combined their two skills by creating spiritual fantasy tales expressed through all-instrumental music on the audio CDs, packed with Hilde’s unique poetry in the "value- added" CD booklets. As Hilde unexpectedly died in 2002 of cancer, the four albums and two more re-worked Reiki collections were in fact finished and released posthumously over the next years, all on his therefore newly founded Sandrose Records label.

 

In 2006 followed a new musical challenge with an emotionally very intense electronic/neo-classical soundtrack work for an impressive educational internet and TV documentary about the Holocaust in WW2 - still to visit in the web at www.31Projects.at. This was then reworked and expanded with additional music and finally also released on CD in 2007 – 31Projects-The Music.

 

As somehow an antipode to this very dark and sad music developed his next work, which has been released in winter 2008. Settled between electronic and prog-rock in a kind of "vintage style of the 80's" it is best to describe as "electronic soundscapes for mind movies", titled Timediver. Influenced by the early Oldfield, Vangelis, Kitaro etc., it was also meant as kind of a final reminiscence to his former Prog-Rock days.

 

Due to the still evident strong concern with meditative, healing music, Gerald also produced in 2008 a very unique CD with spoken classical fairy tales (in German, narrated by Corinna Steinböck) accompanied by his especially composed piano based music, titled “Es war einmal....” Parallel also evolved the idea for a new solo project, settled in a unique Neo-Classical / Ambient / Minimalistic style. Influenced by artists like Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi, Erik Satie etc. was the album Innocent Wasteland, a somehow dark and melancholic conceptual work about the endless cycle of destruction and reawakening, the first result in 2009. Some of the music of the album was again used for another web project, this time about “Disability” - www.7minuten.at

This Neo-Classical / Ambient project effort was continued in 2010 with the follow up album "Lighthouse", which was highly acclaimed by numerous Classical, Ambient and New Age medias worldwide. This time without a clearly defined overall concept behind work the titles as musical expressions of emotional personal impressions collected throughout the year.

 

The next step on this way is now the new album WONDER WAY in 2012, which marks the begin of a collaboration with fellow musician Peter Sagaischek on Viola and Violin, who now replaced the former synthetic string lines with his fine natural instruments. This obviously adds a complete new dimension of expressiveness and feeling to the music, and leads the sound in an even more classical direction. The overall concept still stays very minimalistic and elemental, again enhanced with sparely set electronic embellishments. The songs are musical reflections of real life sceneries or imaginations, found on this wondrous way called life.