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Born in 1973 in Singen Florian Schiertz comes from an artistic background, as both his parents are active in the field of fine arts. He received piano lessons at the age of seven and at fourteen he started learning drums. In 1988 he was attracted to the tabla through seeing Trilok Gurtu who notated a composition ("Dha te te Dha te te Dha Dha te te Dha ge tu na ka ta") for him after a concert. This first poignant experience of the sound world and playing technique of the tabla led Florian in 1993 to take lessons in tabla playing in Freiburg and Basel. Two of the major influences have been Bela Bartok and Ali Akbar Khan.

At the age of twenty-one Florian decided to specialise in tabla playing and became a resident student of Udai Mazumdar (himself a pupil of Ashutosh Bhattacharya and Ravi Shankar) in both Basel and Delhi. In addition he commenced studies in tabla and north Indian classical music at the Rotterdam Conservatoire with Ustad Fayaz Khan. In 2000 he completed his teaching diploma and continued as a resident student by means of the traditional Guru-Shisha-Parampara method with Pandit Sumantra Guha in Kolkata - himself a pupil of Jnanprakash Ghosh - facilitated by a DAAD scholarship in India. In 2003 he completed his postgraduate studies in Rotterdam (Tabla - Master in music) and started to work as a freelance musician.

Florian Schiertz performed tabla solo concerts in Kolkata (Navarang music conference), in Hyderabad (Goethe-Center Hyderabad) and in the "Drums of India" international tablafestival in Munich at Black Box, Gasteig, among many others. The Indian press remarked: "The maestro performed a terrific solo piece" (Deccan Chronicle); "Path breaking: German Tabla Vadak holds audience spellbound" (The Hitavada). Newspaper articles are giving a detailed insight into his studies of the tabla: e.g. "Soul of music can cross boundaries" (The Hindu), "Tabla is his soul" (The New Indian Express) and "One can never master Indian classical music" (Times of India). Florian also gave tabla concerts with his teacher Sumantra Guha and played with grammy award winner Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari.

He accompanies sitar player Pandit Kushal Das in Europe (Ali Akbar College in Basel, Deutsch-Indische Kulturgesellschaft Tuebingen, Cultureel centrum Maasmechelen and Foundation Boris Vian in Paris) and in India (Goethe-Institut Bombay and Goethe-Center Thiruvananthapuram). With sarod player Ken Zuckerman he performed at Zurich University of the Arts and Museum Rietberg in Zurich. He did about 100 concerts with Kalyan Mukherjee (Sarod) in Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland, South Africa and India. He played with ca. 50 distinguished Indian classical artists including Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee (sitar), Nagaraju Talluri (Bansuri), Neela Bhagwat (vocal) and Sudeshna Maulik (Dance), for example at the Indian Embassy in Berlin, Konzerthalle Bamberg, Tropeninstitut in Amsterdam and Science City in Kolkata.

Further he toured with pianist Surendran Reddy at the universities of Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Stellenbosch. The South African press commented: "Awesome, stupendous" (Tonight News). Together with Roman Bunka he composed the music for the film 'Die Legende von Shiva und Parvati' directed by Krishna Sarasvati. Florian is member of the Raviindra new space ensemble led by percussionist Ralf Fricker. In Thiruvananthapuram he played with Kaviyoor Sanal (Mridangam), Jobi Vempala (Violin) and Saunder Rajan (Veena). With western-classical percussionist Wolfram Winkel he developed a "tabla & drums project" for the "Drums of India" tablafestival in Munich at Gasteig. Their performance has been broadcasted by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR-Klassik) with the reflection: "A meeting of cultures: breathtaking and full of suspense."

Florian has conducted tabla workshops e.g. for the 'Schlagzeugklasse' of Prof. Peter Sadlo of The University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. He is the author of a treatise for drum-kit entitled 'tablaisches drumset spiel'. He composed 'tablapiece' in modern music notation - the system is using a five line staff - based on the piano composition 'Toccata for John Roos' by Surendran Reddy. Florian has Youtube clips with Pandit Kushal Das, Kalyan Mukherjee and Wolfram Winkel, CD recordings with Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee and Radio- and televisions broadcasts in India, South Africa, Italy, Germany and The Netherlands to his credit. In spring 2014 Florian Schiertz returned from his 17th performing and studying sojourn in India to teach and live at Lake Constance in Germany.

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