Arts CV
I evolved during my earthly existence to become a multi-artist and composer in order to survive and be a happier person. I am am still evolving in this mysterious spirit spiral into the unknown.
My artistic work is a vast jungle of unexpected surprises around the next bend of the meandering pathways of life. It comprises of many forms of creative artistic expressions in various media. I see myself as a medium for the infinite creative vibrations to flow through me and thus became an earthly instrument of the spirit to express the omniversal energy, both at random and purposefully.
Exploration is exciting to me. My often spontaneous experimental approach in a constructive and positive way yields innovative and surprising results to me with new aesthetics. The artistic possibilities are as infinite as the creation itself.
“INSPIRE BEFORE YOU EXPIRE”
Personal CV
In my own words: I am Thomas Wiegandt, born in 1955 in post war Germany into a dysfunctional family. I had an unhappy childhood. I had much time to myself. Early childhood trauma due to the general alienation from nature of my intellectual parents led to that I developed to become quite different than most people. This is called now “neuro-divergent”. My mother often moved to other towns with us, resulting into having no sense of belonging. I became an outsider early on being on my own world or in the forest. I learnt to fend for myself, became a rebel in my teens, then a left wing anarchist and activist in my twenties, self-medicated myself with various substances to control my anxieties and my borderline personality .
I was restlessly moving around and looking for something which I didn’t know what it was. Inevitably I became an artist and musician, at first it was a subconscious self therapy, now as I finally understand myself a bit better it is cosmic fun and self expression. I studied graphics and other artistic disciplines in Bremen 1977 – 1983. Then I lived in a country community in the north of Germany. We tried to live self sufficiently and discover a new spirituality through sex and drugs and music improvisation, but we were too hurt and had too little social skills for a communal living to work properly.
I moved to a remote cottage in West Cork, Ireland in 1986. I eventually got married, had 2 daughters, got divorced after 8 years. I faced my addictions and worked through my hurt on my own and also with counselling and being a member in a men’s group. In 2002 I met my present partner Ailin. We have one son, who had a good childhood. I almost died in 2009 from a brain haemorhage. After that I had to reinvent myself. Now I feel at home and I am trying to make the best of every moment of my life. Art and community are useful tools for discovery and recovery.
I tried to keep this short, honest and transparent.
Musical CV
My music is a mix of neo-tribal or ethno-ambient compositions and improvisations with influences from many different cultures. Over the years I have recorded a range of quite diverse music either on my own or together with other musicians.
(Excerpts from a public talk)
I am mainly a self taught musician. Since I can remember I loved all sorts of sounds, the nature sounds around me as well as music of different genres. I prefer acoustic music to the cold sounding computer generated or electronic music, which I myself only can handle in small quantities as a contrasting element. I however like not too loud amplified music, which can have a warm vibe and a balanced full sound.
I come from a background of classical and ethnic music and love the edge between rhythmic and melodic structures creating a tribal and trancy quality. In my playing I keep things simple and follow my feeling and some sort of an inspiration. I somehow then resonate with the atmosphere around me as well as tuning into earth and cosmic vibrations on a deeper level. I become the instrument being played. I cannot really explain how this happens and works, it just does. I preferably play constructive music improvisation with conscious people and thus manifesting something new and unique in the moment. I also play my own compositions with defined and arranged musical structures in a loose and variable way .
I am a multi-instrumentalist with a huge collection of instruments from around the world, but my main instrument is the guitar. I also invented and build some musical instruments myself, like the Euklang (a tuned metallophone made from an aluminium washing machine drum), the KlingKlong (a pressure cooker metallophone) and the Sitalin (a long neck lute with an overtone bridge) and a few other ones. I also like to discover and find good sounding objects where ever I move about in my everyday life. I set up outdoor sound spaces, open to the public to be used for spontaneous music sessions. Using these found sound objects in combination with other musical instruments creates a varied new and individual sound .
My earliest musical memory is when I was one year old lying in a pram on the balcony listening to the chicken picking in the yard and at the same time making rhythmic clicking sounds with my tongue. With 4 years I played my first “harp”, an egg cutter with wires to cut hard boiled eggs into slices, with 5 years I build my first “guitar” from a cigar box with elastic rubber bands stretched over it. With 7 years I had to play folk songs on the recorder from notes with a group of other kids. However I played the tunes not from notes, but actually by heart. After 2 years the teacher finally noticed that I could not read music. I was not too sad that I had to leave the recorder group as I rather spend time on my own deep in the forest making sounds with my voice and discovering the world of an old natural magic. With 10 years I lost much interest in music and sound.
In 1970 when I was 15 years old I discovered Rock music. My older brother had an acoustic guitar and one day I found myself playing along to the signature riff of “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones on the bottom E string. It all went from there and I tried to copy my favourite songs as good as I could on an acoustic guitar. After school I often hung out with other young people in the town park and there were always some guitar players, who I watched closely to learn more chords that way. But when I played guitar there was also sometimes an inexplicable impulse and my fingers just moved in a certain way and surprisingly it sounded o.k. and I started to develop a way of playing guitar following this kind of feeling or intuition. 1972 I really got into jamming with other young musicians in the park and I carried my guitar around everywhere. With 18 I bought an electric guitar and as amplifier I used old radios that had been dumped outside private houses for waste collection (Sperrmüll). These valve radios never survived too long due to the horrendous abuse and high volume levels , the sort of thing restricted teenagers do for liberation. I always managed to soon pick up another old radio as replacement and bought it home on the back of my bike. Eventually I bought a 20 Watt GEM amplifier and my neighbours were not exactly delighted once I started using feedback and the whammy bar at home. (I didn’t like their James Last party music either.) Also in 1973 I played my first public gig as part of a music night in my school, I was quite nervous, but everything went well and I even played an own song. In the summer I hung out a lot in the park in the town Delmenhorst with my eyes glued to the fretboard of more advanced guitar players. We went to see Rory Gallagher in Bremen and he certainly blew our minds (I recorded the concert on a reel to reel recorder).
In 1974 I moved to Bremen and I played in various short lived rock and punk bands. The only thing I really was interested in was jamming with other musicians of any genre. It always amazed me how a piece of music could be created just like that on the spot by playing in a spontaneous way and listening to each other. It was so much fun.
In 1980 I moved back to the country and lived in a very musical community in the north of Germany, where we had a lot of spontaneous jam sessions which I sometimes recorded.
In 1984 I saw Sun Ra in Cairo in a small Jazz club. He gave us a hug as we were the only ones really digging his music, it was both like a revelation how to go about music as well as an initiation into cosmic realms and earthlyy improvisation.
In 1986 I moved to West Cork in Ireland where I played together with flute player Jeremy Baines (who had played in the 70s in London with Egg and Hatfield and the North) and we released some quite diverse music on tape cassettes.
In 1990 I travelled to Conakry, Guinea , West Africa and joined a drumming course with legendary Djembe master drummer Famoudou Konate (Simbaya Gare, Matoto.)
Experiencing percussion music in its original surroundings was in its traditional culture with its community orientated lifestyle changed me and my perceptions of society profoundly in many respects. I participated every evening in the communal drumming and dancing session. I witnessed that everyone could join in according to their abilities, nobody was excluded. A certain common sensitivity guaranteed the appropriateness of the individual contributions, thus enriching the social and musical structure by creating a wide ranged microcosm. Everything and everybody seemed to support everything and everybody. A unique and perfect patchwork of peoples art was created every evening after work This communal recreation was repeated in ever changing variations , true to the spirit of the moment , a celebration of life and aliveness.
In West Africa any ability or talent is considered as a gift of God or the spirit or a way of the past away ancestors to connect with the living. This is in stark contrast to the western elitist ego orientated and money driven music culture or business.
Famoudou advised me to watch the feet of the dancers closely and use that as a reference for my own drumming. I also met master drummer Mamady Keita (Then still a sergeant in the army who emphasized on to develop “Le feeling”.
In 1991 i travelled to Bali , Indonesia. I took percussion lessons on a metalophone of the Gamelan orchestra called Gangsa , which is similar to the western vibraphone. The gangsa is played with a mallet in the right hand and then the sustained sound of the metal key is stopped with the left hand , which takes some practice to master. My teacher was Anak Agong Raha , a frail old man who , sat opposite me thus mirroring the ordinary gangsa playing and at the same time he was singing the Kendang drum part with his voice, always smiling and occasionally encouraging me in his broken English ” drum give you spirit ” as to beg the higher forces to grant me some progress. He also said ” music must enter your liver ” tapping on that part of his body.
I was invited to the temple ceremonies which lasted all night. i was the only foreigner present and eventually I fell into a deep trance into the repetitive , slowly changing grooves of the ceremonial Gamelan music. One Balinese man later smiled at me and said ” the spirit likes you ” . I walked home when the sun rose the next morning feeling very happy and at peace and new that this was a spiritual charge that still was practised on Bali as a ritual of the Hindu Dharma religion, a combination of Hinduism and the original old animistic beliefs.
In the early 90’s I got more and more into West African Djembe drumming. I lived together with Togolese drummer Anani Attih in Heidelberg/Germany for a while. Back in Ireland 1994 I started building Djembe drums and also DjunDjun bass drums as they were not available in Ireland in the early 90s. People who bought my drums asked me to teach them to play Djembe but I refused that first as I didn’t know enough about drumming myself. People insisted and eventually with a lot of hesitation on my part I started to give drumming workshops in 1995 in Ballydehob, West Cork, which was a lot of fun and well received and word of mouth spread and people came from all over Ireland and even Europe. In 1996 I opened the Nature Art Workshop Centre for drumming, art and healing as well as the first and only professional drum and percussion shop and mail-order in Ireland. Over the years I have drummed with many different community groups and also with YMCA, Foroige, Youth Reach, Boy Scouts, etc.
I also worked for the Irish Health Board and various special needs/abilities and mental health organizations. Many corporations have booked me to facilitate team building workshops with drums, which have always been very popular as they combine playing and learning in a light hearted way. I have facilitated over 1000 workshops.
In the 90s I also performed meditative concerts called “Dream Waves” crating a peaceful and trancy atmosphere to relaxes the busy minds through the sustained sounds of Tibetan Singing Bowls and other acoustic instruments from around the world.
From 1997 to 2001 I toured with various West African musicians in Ireland performing gigs and giving drumming workshops.
Over the years I have played with many musicians from many parts of the world and my music reflects the influences from many different cultures.
I have been working as a healer and therapist since 1990. I gave Sound Healing sessions using Tibetan singing bowls, drums, flutes and voice. I eventually developed my own Music Therapy approach with Healing Drum rhythms, Sound Meditation, Shamanic Journeying and personal support.
Listening is most important generally and especially when making music. My approach to playing music is to hear everyone. I need to know what I am doing in terms of keys, scales, rhythms, themes, phrases, etc. and then go with the energy or the spirit of the moment and improvise intuitively or jam in kind of a jazz-like way. Another approach is not to think about the music too much and rather “feel” my way and at the same time to listen that my musical contribution is improving the improvised piece of music that is evolving rather than making it worse. Every musician must serve the music. If I cannot tune in with what is going on at any one time, then I do not play at all and enjoy just to listen. Music is magical in its togetherness, when I play it as well as when I just listen to it!
Visual Arts
Techniques used: Drawing, painting, printing, etching, mixed media, collage, assemblages, ready mades (objets trouves), pyro-art, sculptures from wood, stone, metal and other materials, photography, experimental Polaroids, ink zen paintings, Random Art, Nature Art spaces (Magic Forest) and …
I often use various art techniques combined for explorative experimentation and thus create new unusual results with unusual aesthetics. I enjoy the surprise of the unforeseen in an art creation. I like an unexpected outcome and to come up with new ways of making art.
Analog Photography and darkroom work (since 1970)
black and white and colour photography, photograms, infra red film photography, experimental SX 70 Polaroids.
A photography book could be compiled from a variety of “Best Of” photos, titled “Momentary Situations”.
Multimedia improvisation slide shows (since 1980), using 2 slide projectors and episcope together with the participation of other artists with live music and dancers.
Digital Photography (since 2006)
Random generated computer slide show (since 2014)
various themes or categories, such as: heads, graffiti + street art, random art (walls, pavements), glass, abandoned or picturesque decay, signs, words, numbers, etc. combined with suitable (random?) music by TW.
The Categories are:
Abandoned Buildings, Arty, Bantry Fairday, Comics, Covid 19, Dolls, Glass-Broken, Heads, Heads 2, Ice + Snow, Locked Doors, Mary Appears (Best of 2-15), Moon, Nature, Numbers, People, Punk LP covers (Freiburg7-13), Radios, Rain, Random Art (public), Reflections, Sheds, Signs, Signs in German, Signs with words, Sky+Clouds, Stones, Street Art, Structures, Sun, TW-Photo Art, TW-Sculptures, Unusual, Urinals, Vintage Cars, Weird.
NOTE: These Categories photos are on the Pix HD, marked with a “0 “in front, i.e.: “0 HEADS”