- Peace

play hifi lofi, license, BUY

Thomas developed his passion for choral music at the ripe age of 15 when he joined the church choir in his home town, a little farming village in Germany.

Later he enjoyed the privilege of singing in the choirs of internationally renowned choir masters, including Karl-Friedrich Beringer, Dale Warland, and Bobby McFerrin. He sang at performances and appears on recordings of the Dale Warland Singers and the Chamber Choir of Europe.

In 2002, Thomas joined the "Dufay Ensemble" Nuremberg, a vocal group dedicated to Reinassance and contemporary choral music and sought after by young international composers for first performances.

Thomas was the musical leader of various amateur vocal ensembles. In 2004, he won a regional contest of the "Detuscher Sängerbund" (German Singers Foundation) with his group "Ensemble Männerklang", whose performance got aired by the "Bayerischer Rundfunk" (Bavarian public radio).

At age 20, he started composing Rock songs; his first Choral arrangements followed a little later and several of them were performed by church choirs and amateur ensembles.

In the late 1990s, Thomas built his own digital sound studio and started recording his own works. In 2005, his "Below - A cappella Mix" was one of 13 winners of the Magnatune Lisa DeBenedictis Remix Contest.

Thomas is also a passionate electric guitar player.

About the album "Peace"

"Peace" is my first full album length choral project. I was aiming at a music that is perfectly relaxing for myself, and I realized that 3 things disturb my relaxation most and thus should be eliminated from the music of this project: Boredom, Beats, and too much dynamics. So I thrived for a Mendelssohn-like full bodied choral sound with simple and beautiful melodies and no beat boxing, slow tempi and harmonies interesting enough to gain attention yet simple enough to still allow relaxing.

The music of "Peace" is influenced by the Real Group (I wrote "Peace I" after I had heard their song "Gøta"), György Ligeti (I tried to imitate the blurriness of his polyphonies in "The Lord is my shepherd" but reduced the tonal material to old church modes; you can actually play "The Lord" on a keyboard solely on the white keys), Arvo Pärt ("Nunc dimittis" uses a Pärt-like voicing but is more harmonic than any genuine Pärt piece I know), Morten Lauridsen (I used some of the chords characteristic to his "Lux aeterna" or "Magnum Mysterium" but put them into a functional harmonic context), and Max Reger (I had his "Schweigen" in mind when I wrote "Come to me"). And probably others.

Thomas is an avid remixer and his work can be found on the Lisa DeBenedictis Remix Album at Magnatune.