Prof. Olaf Taranczewski

Vita

Olaf Taranczewski (born 1977) studied jazz piano at the Mainz University of Music and jazz arrangement and composition with Joachim Ullrich at the Cologne University of Music. In 2003, he and his duo partner Oliver Fox (saxophone) received the annual scholarship from the Zukunftsinitiative Rheinland-Pfalz / Villa Musica Mainz. As a jazz pianist, he released the albums Taranczewski Trio (2005) and Speak Silence (2010) on Poet Club Records, as well as Interiors (2019), When I Was (2021) and LOM (2024) on Hey!blau Records.

Since 2006, he has been living and working as a composer and music producer in Berlin. He has never committed himself to one genre and has composed for the computer games Abraxas and The Great Jitters (Best German Mobile Game 2011, German Developer Award), cinema and TV feature films such as Mi America (USA, HBO 2015) and Schweigeminute (ZDF/Moovie, 2016), as well as regularly for the television programmes Frontal 21 (ZDF) and Satirischer Jahresrückblick (ZDF) (nominated several times for the Grimme Prize) since 2011, TV documentaries such as DNA Cooking (Arte/BR), Wie wird die Stadt satt (ARD/WDR) and Hier und dort (Thurnfilm/MDR), as well as for theatre productions such as Der Zerbrochene Krug (Theatre Magdeburg) and the operetta Turnadot (world premiere at the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival 2018) with the musical comedy duo Rebecca Carrington & Colin Brown. In 2009, he won the award for best film music at the Lünen Film Festival for the cinema documentary ANNE PERRY – INTERIORS.

For the score of Dissonance (director: Till Nowak), he and co-composer Frank Zerban received the German Film Music Award in the main category ‘Best Music in a Film’ in 2015, as well as the award for best film music at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. DISSONANCE was nominated for the European Film Award at the 2015 Berlinale and received a total of more than 40 international awards. Together with visual artist Phil Max Schöll (Weltraumgrafik/Pfadfinderei), Olaf Taranczewski realised the façade projection Hommage Collage, which was one of the three competition winners at the GENIUS LOCI Festival in Weimar. For Volker Bertelmann (Hauschka), he rearranged his orchestral works Materials and Lost for piano and string quartet, with performances at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Volksbühne Berlin in 2018.

In the trio FOC with Frank Zerban and bassist Chris Ross (Wolfmother), Olaf Taranczewski plays prepared piano and synthesizer and explores the boundaries between free jazz and electronic ambient music. He also regularly composes music for commercials and image films, including for Polaroid, Panasonic, and Kässbohrer (Questar Awards 2017 in New York: Gold for ‘Brand Experience’ and ‘Corporate Identity’).

In his role as professor of producing with a focus on jazz and pop at the Trossingen University of Music, Olaf Taranczewski teaches music production, arrangement, improvisation and songwriting, and leads ensemble courses. He gives seminars on topics such as analogue sound synthesis and film music and supervises students in their composition work in the music design lab and as part of the short film project with Nanyang University in Singapore.

Webpage: www.olaf-taranczewski.de