Only once have I had the honor of sharing the stage with Tony Oxley, in 2008 at the Philharmonie in Berlin, when he played in a duo with Cecil Taylor and I played with the Uli Gumpert Workshop Band. But I’ve seen him countless times before, the first time when I was a teenager. He made a lasting impression on me; I started expanding and rebuilding my drum kit, soldering contact microphones and manipulating the sound of my set with them (they never worked that well, so I gave it up early). There was also a great temptation to try to weld a cowbell that big, but I abandoned that idea.
But more importantly, at a time when everyone was telling me that I had to decide which musical direction to go in, I saw that it was possible to do both free non-idiomatic improvisation and time playing at the highest level, and both as expressions of the same free spirit. Tony was and is a guiding light for me.
Thank you very much, Tony.
