Still Magic by Bernward Koch

Still Magic" is an album by an artist, who has experienced a most astonishing rise within the New Instrumental Music scene during last couple of years. With his 1990 album "Flowing" Bernward Koch had a very successful debut, both in Europe and the United States, where the influential radio station "The Wave" popularized the work of the then completely unknown German keyboardist via power rotation. Bernward Koch's fame began to transcend the New Instrumental Music community, when in 1991 the artist (among greats such as Pat Metheny, Suzanne Vega, Enja or Sting) contributed a track to the compilation "Wave Aid", a benefit for a charity initiated by the Liz Taylor Foundation. Bernward Koch's final breakthrough came in 1992, when his second album "Laguna de la Vera" stayed high in the Billboard New Age charts for a couple of months. Simultaneously it became one of the most highly acclaimed instrumental records of the year in various other countries. Today Bernward Koch is considering by many as one of the genre's leading new artists. Nobody, who knows Koch's music, will be surprised by his success: the classically trained artist composes pieces of outstanding formal maturity with an astonishing musical finesse. Koch himself calls his compositions "songs without lyrics" - and ideed they are delicately crafted and clearly show their creators sense of form. Koch's arrangements are always marked by a tasteful balance of synthetic and natural sounds. The organic pulse of a real, flesh and blood drummer is essential for Koch's music, and the exquisite flute playing of his wife Christiane Böhm has over the years become a trademark feature of his sound. On "Still Magic" the music of Bernward Koch more than ever unfolds an unobtrusive but seducitve charm - and once again many listeners on both sides of the Atlantic will soon be under its spell