RIP Klaus Doldinger

Sad news: Today, German composer Klaus Doldinger passed away at home at the age of 89.

He was not only a notable saxophone player and jazz pioneer in Germany, he embraced synthesisers early on and made them an integral part of his jazz-rock orientated band Passport (which, in turn, featured many musicians who beame notable in their own right, e. g. Kristian Schultze, Hendrik Schaper, or Jimmy Jackson -- who apparently added some organ overdubs to Tangerine Dream's Electronic Meditation album at a later stage, and played organ on Amon Düül's Tanz Der Lemminge).

To me, Doldinger's most outstanding work was his 1983 album Constellation which made heavy use of Fairlight CMI, PPG Wave, Prophet 5, Memory Moog, Oberheim OBXa, DSX, and DMX as well as Korg PS and Mini Moog.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvBdBIkIB9I[/youtube]

This album has clearly left its mark on me. Das Boot from 1981 is another wonderful album, not to forget various title tracks to German TV series (Ein Fall für Zwei being highly electronic in a TD Streethawk kind of fashion):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWwAWbZlmyo[/youtube]

Thanks for all this, and lots more.

Stephen

A great musician - and a great loss - for sure.

I love the Passport albums, but it was, for personal, non-musical reasons, always the main theme of "Das Boot" that stood out for me.
Of course, all of his other work (as far as I'm aware of it) was top notch, too...