Mein Leben als Musiker: Manfred Lemm & Ensemble

im Uhrzeigersinn:
Benno Schleich
Manfred Lemm
Johannes Schmidt
Michael Kempa
Günter Schenk
Achim Eckert

Ein für mich sehr bedeutsames Kapitel in meiner Laufbahn als Musiker ist die Mitgliedschaft im originalen Ensemble des Wuppertaler Sängers und Gitarristen Manfred Lemm.

Zwischen 1984 und dem Beginn der 90er Jahre spielte dieses Ensemble vier CDs mit 69 jiddischen Liedern des bekannten jüdisch-polnischen Dichters und Komponisten Mordechaj Gebirtig auf, der 1942 im Ghetto Krakau ermordet wurde. Darüber hinaus gaben wir in diesem Zeitraum eine stattliche Anzahl an Konzerten und waren an mehreren nationalen und internationalen Festivals beteiligt.

In dieser aus drei Musikern des Opernhaus Wuppertal und meinem langjährigen Balalaika Ensemble Druschba Kollegen Johannes Schmidt bestehenden Formation spielte ich mehrere Instrumente: Kontrabass-Balalaika, Konzertgitarre und Tenorbanjo.

Meine musikalische Zusammenarbeit und natürlich auch Freundschaft mit Manfred Lemm hat eine Vorgeschichte: im September 1981 gaben Lemm sowie die aus Kai Balke (Akkordeon), Johannes Schmidt (Balalaika und Klarinette) und mir bestehende Kern-Crew des Balalaika Ensemble Druschba in der VHS Wuppertal ein Konzert, das unter dem Titel Nu - Me Lacht (Jiddische Lieder Und Geschichten) auf Vinyl veröffentlicht wurde.

Letztendlich verdanke ich Manfred Lemm, dass es mir gelingen konnte, nach meinem Abitur eine Laufbahn als Musiker zu starten, denn er war es, der seinerzeit meinen strengen und misstrauischen Vater in mehreren Gesprächen überzeugen konnte, mich sozusagen "gehen zu lassen" und mir zu erlauben, mit ihm aufzutreten und auch fernab der Heimat zu konzertieren.

Being a musician: Ivan Rebroff: Kalinka

We - a quartet by the name of "Balalaika Ensemble Druschba", with Prima-Balalaika, Guitar, Accordion and me playing the Contrabass Balalaika - had already performed with Ivan Rebroff for several years and were asked to record this very track in a recording studio near Frankfurt in 1983.

RIP, Ivan Rebroff

On February 27th 2008 the great german singer Ivan Rebroff (real name: Hans Rolf Rippert) passed away at the age of 76. This is going to be a personal commemoration, because I´ve been touring with Ivan from 1983 - 1986 and played the bass balalaika on stages all over Europe.

Not having met Ivan since then, I just heard of his demise in the news just like everyone else, and this certainly awakes some precious memories, all the more Ivan was someone who had a pretty formative and inspiring impact on my life, so to speak.

website in the making : vesture couturier

I´m currently building a website for a new customer, and this is how the site´s index page is (for the time being, you know how quickly things like that are going to change :-) going to look like:



1. About the project:

Well, what´s a "Kleidermacherin" ? As you might guess from looking at the image in the middle, my customer is "producing clothes" (sort of literal translation), but this rather ordinary german label does by no means reflect the true gorgeousness and artistry of what my customer really does :: she´s an accredited vesture couturier producing high class and tailor-made theater costumes, historic robes and business fashion for women, men and children -- a craft which actually has already been practiced in the european medieval times.

However, to me it´s a truly challenging task to "communicate" this very special craft respectively the associated "grandeur" via a website. But it must be said that (unlike other domains like e.g. real estate websites which are plenty in number and *must* provide a high standard for being taken seriously) I now wouldn´t have to struggle with too many "reference values" for various reasons:

1. very few german vesture couturiers do have a website

2. those few couturiers who do, funnily enough have a very badly designed site using a, say, "90´s, frames, all sorts of font faces, sizes & colors" style

2. Tools used:

"Die Kleidermacherin" is actually my first project being designed "from scratch" with Dreamweaver CS3 -- something that´s giving me enough opportunity to compare it´s new features and improvements to previous versions, and I have to say :: it´s just great, and in particular the CSS handling (and internal display !) is in many ways sooo much better than what´s been possible with previous versions !

The provided "layout" variations are "CSS only", extremely well prepared and documented, and of course valid -- this makes it a breeze to build your own page design based on a certain sample, and the initial "Design" my customer decided on during a meeting was the "1 column liquid, centered, header and footer" one.

The current page design displayed above is certainly quite a "tweaked" and extended version, but Dreamweaver CS3 respectively it´s default Layouts truly "play" to you and your customer when it comes to choosing a draft -- just great !

3. Approach

This time my coding- & database related skills will be taking a back seat in favor of design -- something I´m innately not that great in, but when looking at my current draft I gotta say it´s not bad either, and I´m sort of proud of the top logo including the "scissors" idea :-)

The pages will be mostly static, but of course I´ll be throwing in some custom-made PHP/MySQL based...

4. Dynamic features

4.1. Guestbook



As opposed to most prefabricated guestbook scripts available at popular script "libraries" like Hotscripts or elsewhere, this own development tries hard to meet one important need :: providing utmost security measures to protect the system against the "usual vulnerability suspects" such as fake entries by "bots". In addition to this the guestbook entry form displayed above contains heaps of validation routines (both client- and serverside) and "data filters" to prevent inadvertently or intentionally submitted wrong or missing data.

Custom programming is not just fun, but can add some value at times, because it´s *you* who´s supposed to "know your stuff" and to control what´going to happen with the data after submission ::

a) I added another server side validation that´s checking the database for existing entries to make sure that no email address is getting submitted twice

b) the new entry will first have to be approved by the site admin before being published on the website -- means, my customer will be receiving a notification about the new entry and then be able to revise the message respectively activate respectively reject/delete the entry within her guestbook administration area

c) a certainly quite convenient feature to the visitor adding a guestbook entry is the option to receive a notification once the new guestbook entry has been approved and actived by the site administrator

my first Adobe Developer Center article

Phew, I just managed to finalize my very first specialist article/tutorial for the Adobe Developer Connection (link to the now published article) -- it´s about something cool I recently developed using PHP, Dreamweaver and Adobe´s awesome AJAX framework called SPRY, and I´m of course very proud of having been *allowed* to contribute something to this truly renowned developer resource.

My "application" does all sort of stuff simultaneously and was put together using a somewhat adventurous mix of technologies :: have a database driven page (PHP of course) pass some directory/file path information (a sequence of both static info and dynamic variables) to another PHP script that´s reading the file contents of the specified directory and returns all image files plus several related file data (width, height, filedate etc etc) to the very same page -- well yes, as dynamically created XML data which will "feed" a Spry Table that´s not just displaying the received data, but also allows for sorting the "image list" by all above mentioned criteria. SPRY is AJAX after all, means the sorting procedure will be done without reloading the page.

However I´m not writing this in order to brag about being a cool developer, what I´m certainly not (err, to some extent maybe ;-). The point is :: as "first time article writer" I admit it has been unexpectedly tough (took me about 2 weeks) to write a 24 page article about something I managed to develop in, say, 3 hours -- not because it´s written in my favorite foreign language English (what was comparatively easy), but because I ...

• am innately a coder used to develop behind closed doors and without any "pressure of justification" -- that´s probably a harsh term, so let´s better rephrase it to "need to explain how you´re doing your work"
  
  
• soon started struggling with an unpredictable insufficiency :: being a certainly somewhat skilled coder, but lacking any previous experience as writer who´s supposed to mediate his train of thougts so others will be able to follow you
  
  
• soon observed that writing this article requires me to fabricate a greatest possible accuracy and "spelling style".
  
  Go figure, it´s not going to be published in your local newspaper (what probably would allow for some sloppiness), it´s being published under the Adobe hood, what starts to put you under a definitely appropriate pressure :: it has to be as *great* as possible, it has to be as *elaborate* as can be -- mind the demanding neighborhood !
  
  When starting to write, comparing your stuff with what´s already been published by others has been pretty scaring and stimulating at the same time :: you do note that the overall quality grade is *very* high, and your work should not be allowed to fall behind this level in order to avoid embarassing yourself in public (and your audience will be a huge one !) -- but once you start accommodating to these circumstances, you´re getting to a "well, then let´s simply *do* it this way !" point. What´s sort of funny is :: after realizing and accepting all that, things suddenly started to "flow", and the article´s lion share was written in just 3 days.
  

Now that both the article and all the sample files have been submitted to Adobe for review, proof-reading etc etc, I´ll allow myself to lean back a little and say -- it has been a great experience after all, because it gave me the opportunity to learn something I wasn´t aware of before :: how to deal with a brand new set of personal limitations, and how to turn the related insecurities and casual "writer´s blocks" for the better after all.

I´m truly pretty much indebted to Adobe´s George Fox !! George seems to be the main "Developer Center Article" - coordinator in charge over there and assumingly spends all his day with coordinating stuff and pampering a certainly huge amount of authors by (guess I´m not alone with this ;-) caring for their own set of existential orientations -- but whenever yours truly struggled with stuff or simply needed advice, George was always there for skillfully guiding me through the whole process with a tremendeous amount of friendlyness, patience and "heads up !" encourangements. True mentorship !!

It´s due to great folks like him why I´m not only proud of being an "Community Expert" -- this makes me sort of feel "at home", and this makes me happy !

I´m now an Adobe Community Expert ;-)

WOW, this is truly tremendous news to start this blog with :: in march 2007 I was accepted as Adobe Community Expert in the "Dreamweaver & related" realm -- for comprehensible reasons this means a lot to me personally and of course my profession.

I´m truly grateful for several reasons :: the nomination as such, the opportunity to exchange knowledge & fun with 199 other "Community Experts" plus Dreamweaver users from all over the world, and of course :: access to / participation with one of the most profound knowledge resources related to my "native" field of work and sooo many other areas of application ! Thanks Adobe !!

Sounds unbelievable ? See my Bio at the Adobe website