Gernot Blume - profile

Composer, Musician: Multiinstrumentalist, Voice

The German composer and multiinstrumentalist Gernot Blume fascinates with his exorbitant musical creativity: through the expressive breadth of his instrument array, including piano, harp, nyckelharpa, accordion, contrabass, sitar, surbahar, vibraphone, marimba, violin, guitar, mandolin, recorders, frame drums, tabla, gamelan, percussion, and voice, he combines improvisatory techniques of many cultures and his own compositions in a transcendental aesthetic with a global reach. Music of great complexity and beauty.

“Music that comes from the soul is not superfluous luxury, but a deeply rooted human need. Music points us toward the most basic questions of our existence: it comforts us, celebrates, prays, and breathes, music sings and cries, jubilates and gives thanks for the wonders of the world. Music, so understood, transcends boundaries. It searches for the most diverse timbres, influences, inspirations, styles, and instruments; it knows the traditions of the cultures of this world. This is the kind of chant I join in with my music.” Gernot Blume

Gernot Blume - press voices

“Wanderer between the worlds” Klaus Mümpfer, Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz (Newspaper)

“Wonderful Music” Joachim Ernst Berendt, Jazz Critic, Author

“Music of great intricacy and beauty” Glen Moore, Co-founder of the World Music/Jazz Ensemble Oregon

“Impressive. A highly developed composer” James Newton, Guggenheim Fellow, Composer, Flutist

“Multi-music genius” Allgemeine Zeitung, Bingen, Germany

Gernot Blume - resume

Born in Bingen on the Rhine, Germany, composer, pianist, and multi-instrumentalist Gernot Blume grew up with classical piano music as well as Irish, Yiddish, and Eastern European folk music.  He learned guitar, mandolin, percussion, flutes, and harp. 1988 he moved to Los Angeles, California, in order to study world music at CalArts. There he also studied Indian classical music with Amiya Dasgupta, a main disciple of the famous sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. He also studied ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan, where he earned a doctorate with a dissertation on the American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett. For five years he taught as Assistant Professor of Music at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, USA. In 2003 he returned to his native Germany, where he works as an independent musician, composer, and lecturer.

As a composer and musician Gernot Blume received numerous prizes and stipends in the USA and Germany. He is the recipient of the art prize of his native city, Bingen on the Rhine. Since 1981 he makes music for concerts, cds, films, and videos, and his compositions have been performed at numerous renowned cultural institutions in the US, Japan, Poland, France, Norway and Germany.

Under his name, and in collaboration with his wife, the American musician and composer Julie Spencer, he has released ten CDs:

“Ask” (1992), “Changes Inside” (1995), “Lost and Found” (2000), “Harp Travels” (2004), “Ecstatic Sunlight” (2005), “Colors of the Soul” (2006), “Griot” (2006) and “Out of the Stillness” (2006), “Jetzt Wohin?” (2007), " Incantation" (2009), as well as a Live-Concert-Video, “Common Ground” (1994).