MAIN STAGE 20.07
Christian Löffler’s art is heavily inspired by his environment. He lives and works, both as a painter and musician, in the remote Darss Peninsula in Germany’s north-east and his atelier can be found within a rustic log cabin surrounded by overgrown wilderness over-looking the Baltic Sea. The area has provided him with the solitude necessary for his highly introspective work, while at the same time influencing him via its rugged landscapes in a continuous creative dialogue between artist and nature. This bucolic seclusion, tranquil by nature and intense in nature, has defined Löffler’s body of work, both visual and musical, throughout the years. Following his debut in 2012, A Forest, Löffler launches his second album Mare in 2017. Every bit of his environment can be felt, and literally heard in Mare, which is based on the field-recordings of his atelier. The result, a highly organic voyage through his nature-abundant residence and workplace.
In 2019 Löffler continues to draw on the importance of his physical surroundings as inspiration. Named after the town he resides in, Graal, contains music that was created in a period where Löffler was constantly away on tour – sketches of melodies written on the road. The resulting six tracks on the album have a minimal and focused feel, given by the back-to-basics approach Löffler took when working on these rough ideas. It was followed by Lys, which serves as a sequel and contrast to Graal, its predecessor. The idea is for the whole project to have an organic dichotomy – while Graal was created on the road (Löffler likens it to a travel diary), the follow up is a classic studio album, created in his home recording space. Lys, however, captures something even more fundamental in nature: light. Both albums were also accompanied by Löffler’s own art; a series of hand-drawn monochromatic sketches and paintings that served as inspiration for the music.
In 2020 invited by the world’s leading classical music label, Deutsche Grammophon, Löffler reworked pieces by Beethoven, as well as other legendary German classical music composers such as Wagner and Bach, to create his latest album Parallels. By breathing new life into classical compositions, Parallels invites a new generation of music-lovers to discover the rich heritage of classical music as well as explore Deutsche Grammophon’s historic archives. In April 2024, the king of melancholic electronic music will release his next album, A Life.