Andreas Vollenweider & Friends

Harpistry | Hope | Liberaton

For more than 40 years now, Andreas Vollenweider’s music has had a special meaning for millions of people across the planet. It has been a source of hope and motivation, and an opportunity to retreat into the oh-so-personal «CAVERNA MAGICA» to recharge their batteries and optimism levels. Admittedly this is quite a claim, but proof that music can actually hit these heights can be found in the global success of the sound of Vollenweider’s electric harp backed by his band. People still travel great lengths all around the world to catch one of his concerts – not just to listen to his music but to connect with a special feeling and grab on to a strand of hope in these tough times. In South Africa for example, his music has been seen from the Apartheid era in the early 1980s right through to this day as an «ode to liberation» by the black population.

Born in Zurich in 1953, Vollenweider was already tasting success in the early 1970s in German-speaking Europe with the «Poesie & Musik» project featuring texts by Heinrich Heine, Jacques Prévert, Francois Villon and Pablo Neruda. He is a multi-instrumentalist who discovered the harp at the end of the 70s and realised that it was his perfect match. He went on to develop his own playing technique, expanded the technical side of the instrument, and in doing so created an unmistakeable new sound which he first unveiled at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1981. It fitted the zeitgeist perfectly and won over fans around the world in a heartbeat.