Local Heroes: Matthias Kaul

While some playfully balk at the momentous earnestness of new music, Hamburg drummer and composer Matthias Kaul loves it obliquely: his pieces have titles like ‘Pyropoetic Park Music for Ensemble and Firework’ or ‘Delicatessen for three actors in a hot dog stand’ – no wonder that the German World Service has certified him as having a ‘tendency to be off his trolley’. One of his personal Greatest Hits is the performance ‘Kafka’s blueberries’, in which the singer doesn’t just recite texts, but also plies them with saucepans, telephone receivers and toy cars.