Welcome to christophbull.com Listen to organica 3: cdbaby.com/cd/christophbull3 Listen to organica 2: cdbaby.com/cd/christophbull Listen to Old School: cdbaby.com/cd/christophbull2 View Christoph Bull (Solo Artist)'s EPK To e-mail me and to sign up on my e-mail list: xoph@earthlink.net Thanks for visiting christophbull.com To listen to and to order my CDs organica 3, organica 2 and Old School, please click on the links above. There is also a link to my Sonicbids Electronic Press Kit, and an e-mail address. Below you'll find info about my upcoming concert schedule, a bio, and thoughts about my new organ album organica 3. My next musical live events are: Friday, July 24 - Saturday, August 29 Sylt, Germany German premiere of musical Treasure Island by Christoph Bull & Tim Mathews http://www.schatzinsel-sylt.de/termine_shows.html Sunday, August 2, 3 p.m. Westwood United Methodist Church Christoph Bull, Organ www.westwoodumc.org I'm also working on a new collection of pop songs, a Beatles book, and three new organ recordings. More about that later. Christoph Bull Bio: Christoph Bull hails from Mannheim, Germany, and is now the University Organist and organ professor at UCLA, as well as Principal Organist at First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica. He improvised his first tunes on the piano at age five and started playing church services, organ concerts and rock shows at age twelve. He's been at home in the worlds of classical and rock ever since practicing the organ in the choir loft and with his first rock band in the basement of the same church. In L.A., he has performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Royce Hall, and First Congregational Church, but also at the Whisky A Go Go, the Viper Room, Cinespace and Hotel Cafe. With violin player Lili Haydn he opened up for Cindy Lauper, with Sitar player Nishat Khan he appeared in India. He has performed on the pipe organs at the Catholic Cathedrals of Los Angeles, Salzburg and Moscow. In July of 2004, Dr. Bull was a featured recitalist and workshop presenter at the National Convention of the American Guild Of Organists. Since then, he's also performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles as a solo performer and with the L.A. Master Chorale. He has also accompanied Silent Movies on the pipe organ and collaborated with Interpretive Painter Norton Wisdom and videographers Benton C. Bainbridge and S-Video. In 2007, he received an ASCAPlus Award for his concert programming. He has worked with the L.A. Master Chorale and Grammy-Award-winning Southwest Chamber Music, but also with Bootsy Collins, and George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic. Outside of music, Christoph has run the L.A. Marathon three times and won the German youth championship in baseball with this team, BC Tornados Mannheim. His education began in Germany (Karl-Friedrich Gymnasium Mannheim, University of Church Music Heidelberg, Freiburg Conservatory) and continued in the United States (Berklee College Of Music, University of Southern California, American Conservatory of Music). His teachers include Cherry Rhodes, Hermann Schaeffer, Ludwig Doerr, Charlie Banacos, Sam Swartz, Paul Jordan, and, in master classes, Craig Cramer, Guy Bovet, and Marie-Claire Alain. He has produced several CDs with contemporary and classical music, as well as a series of educational albums with children's music (www.singlish.com). One of his songs, "Ali Ali Ali," was licensed by Taschen Books to promote a collector's book about Muhammad Ali. His concert and CD series 'organica' was conceived in 1999 to showcase the many facets of the pipe organ and other keyboards, ranging stylistically from traditional organ repertoire to original arrangements of popular and film music. About organica 3: When I made organica 3, the number 3 played an important role. Very little of it was on purpose, most of it "just happened" and a lot of it I didn't notice at first. I picked three pieces of a kind three times (3 pieces by Ramón Noble, 3 Jazz Organ Preludes by Johannes Michel, 3 Spirit Songs), and I chose three pieces with three movements, parts or sections (Carlos Seixas' "Sonata in F," Bach's "Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C," and Gigout's "Scherzo"). I recorded the album with engineers Terry Cutshall and Art Goulet in three sessions, spanning just over three months, with the last session being held on March 3, 2003 (3/3/3). I finally completed the editing of the album 3 years and 3 months after the last recording. We used Benedikt Brydern's Master No. 3 for CD replication. And one fine day, the third version of Wendell Pascual's album design arrived by e-mail at 3:33 p.m. I used three instruments (the two Allen organs and my voice) and recorded at three locations (churches in Camarillo and Eagle Rock, and my home studio, The Bull Pen). The Spirit Songs are all in 3, meter-wise, and two of them ("On The Wings Of A Dove" and "Rain Down") have 3 verses, while on the recording of the third ("O Holy Dove") I grouped three verses together. When I took a closer look at the sheet music for "Rain Down" I saw that the text is based on Psalm 33. That track turned out to be 3 minutes and 3 seconds long. The main motif in the driving section of "Improvisation on September 11, 2001" consists of three notes, and the third version of the piece (which is not on this album) I recorded on 3/3/3, take number 33 on my Smart Recorder disc, with the three-note section starting at 3:06. After picking Norton Wisdom's beautiful front cover, which he painted live during one of my organ concerts, I realized that he had given me three keyboards to play (as I did on the Allen organ at St. Columba's). A few words about the Allen Renaissance organs I played on this album: I chose these instruments because of my friendship with the church communities that own them and because I enjoy them as musical instruments. With the sampling of real pipes, these organs have gotten very good and realistic and even offer advantages that some other organs don't have, in terms of clarity, versatility, portability, and compatibility with other MIDI instruments. This record doesn't make the case that sampled organs should replace pipe organs, but that they are a welcome addition to the family of keyboard instruments. A few notes about a couple of the recordings: I recorded Ramón Noble's "Toccatina" twice, because the first recording had some car noises on it. (St. Columba's is located next to a busy street.) But after comparing the two recordings I preferred the original one and I realized that it was only appropriate that it had some car noises on it, as the composition was inspired by the busy hustle and bustle of Mexico City. The piece on "September 11, 2001" is a free improvisation that originated at a live concert at St. Columba's in 2002, shortly before I decided to make this record. It was little more than a year after the attacks that an audience member suggested an improvisation theme by submitting a scrap of paper that simply said "September 11, 2001." Another audience member suggested Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changin'." I thought both subjects fit together, since our times surely changed after 9/11, and I had already recorded an arrangement of the song, called "2001: TimeChange," before the attacks, for inclusion on my first 'organica' album, organica 2001. At the 2002 concert, I included Dylan's theme in my improvisation and afterwards a good friend of mine came over to let me know that he thought it was brilliant that I included the spiritual "O When The Saints Go Marching In" which, of course, I hadn't. However, the two themes have certain similarities. I thought the "O When The Saints" theme was a perfect tribute to the firefighters, policemen and other brave people on September 11, and I also liked the spiritual implications. And so I consciously incorporated the melody into the recording of the improvisation, which took place at St. Columba's after an all-night session starting on Thanksgiving Day 2002. Besides "O When The Saints" I incorporated the theme from Bach's "Little Fugue in G minor" which itself contains a segment from a German folk song. Others have already looked at the number symbolism of 9/11/2001, with 9 equaling 3 times 3, the individual numbers in '2001' adding up to 3, and the obvious correlation of 9/11 to the emergency phone number as well as the number 11 symbolizing the Twin Towers. Numbers have always played an important role in music, in terms of the mathematical relationship of the different pitches and rhythms and also in terms of number symbolism. This was especially important to the master of organ music, Johann Sebastian Bach. The number 3 stands for the Christian Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and I believe that the Spirit was very present in the making of this record. Enjoy! Christoph Bull, Los Angeles, California, January of 2007.