Peter Baumann

One day in 1971, Peter Baumann, a young fellow who had just turned 19 years old, showed up in TD's rehearsal room in Berlin. He couldn't play keyboards all that well, but he had a knack for conjuring up very unusual sounds on a cheap Farfisa organ. Edgar Froese and Chris Franke were not sure whether this collaboration would prove to be fruitful, but suddenly Peter Baumann performed for 20 minutes with a reverb effect underneath the organ, creating various effects. This performance landed him the job with TD.

An interesting time began for TD in the 70's with a number of great albums and live concerts. The line-up Edgar Froese/Chris Franke/Peter Baumann lasted until 1977 -- with only brief interruptions. Nine major albums are credited to Peter Baumann: Zeit (1972), Atem (1973), Phaedra (1974), Rubycon, Ricochet (both 1975), Stratosfear (1976), Sorcerer, Encore (both 1977) and Soundmill Navigator (recorded 1976, released 2000). During this time Peter Baumann also produced his first solo-album Romance 76 (1976) and three more during the years, after he had left the group: Trans Harmonic Nights (1979), Repeat Repeat (1981) and Strangers In The Night (1983).

Peter Baumann was a more intuitively trained artist. He never had any musical lessons nor did he want to follow musical terms, which made it often a bit complicated for the rest of the band to communicate during record sessions. Concerts were not a problem, because here everything was allowed and possible. As far as the technical side was concerned, Peter Baumann could support the band very well by doing all the technical troubleshooting, even things a professional technician had problems with -- that was a great advantage for the band in many live situations.

In 1985 he founded the label Private Music that published several albums of new age and electronic musicians including Suzanne Ciani, Patrick O'Hearn, and Yanni. Some of their albums have been co-produced by Peter Baumann. In 1988 Tangerine Dream signed with Private Music to release five new albums on this label: Optical Race (1988), Miracle Mile, Lily On The Beach (both 1989), Melrose (1990) and The Private Music Of Tangerine Dream (1991).

In late 1992 Peter Baumann founded the formation Blue Room together with ex-Reflex singer John Baxter and Paul Haslinger who had been member of Tangerine Dream between 1986 and 1990. A CD was planned to be out in early 1993, but it was released as a promo version only. Soon after Peter Baumann sold Private Music to the BMG company and parted from music business.

More than 20 years later, in January 2015, he met with Edgar Froese in Austria, and a new collaboration between them was planned. Unfortunately, and unexpectedly, Edgar Froese died only a few days later. During early 2015, Baumann joined the remaining band members, Thorsten Quaeschning and Ulrich Schnauss, to work with them on the forthcoming Tangerine Dream album, but apparently this did not work as intended, so he left them again a few weeks later on amicably terms. In May 2016, Machines Of Desire, Peter Baumann first solo album after more than 30 years was released.