.....Nearly no one knows that Spanner, who plays piano, guitar and bass, has composed music for "Tatort" and many other films together with director Dominik Graf - a friend from school days. 

And recently Spanner himself released an album of instrumental pieces. "I could live without a brush, but not without music," he says. The pieces are mostly light and upbeat, but only seemingly simple. Similar to his children's books, there is a deep love of arranging in them.

A carousel full of music

Helmut Spanner composed a CD , by Alois Knoller

The enforced Covid 19 break can awaken creative potential. Thus, the popular picture book illustrator Helmut Spanner ("Ich bin die kleine Katze", "Erste Bilder, erste Wörter") has returned to his love of music. In his home studio in Nassenbeuren, the Augsburg-born artist has now produced his first self-composed and self-recorded CD entitled "Karussell".

He says that his time in the school band "The Smoking Chickens" at the "Musisches Gymnasium" in Marktoberdorf and his time as a student in Munich, when he worked in various dance bands to supplement his modest salary in addition to his studies at the art academy, have awakened in him. His instruments were and are guitar and bass. The piano comes along anyway.

So now he turns his carousel to danceable, instrumental piano songs. From initially leisurely rounds, Spanner gets the nostalgic fairground vehicle moving mightily. Sometimes he makes it roll like a ship at sea, then jump like a calf in the pasture. At the end, the listeners take part in the village country life with cockcrow, pig grunting and mooing in a hearty stomping dance.

In between, Helmut Spanner indulges in nostalgic memories of tea dances and boogie parties. The songs celebrate a carefree life and exude good humour. Even the blues sounds more dreamy than sad with him. His friend, the film director Dominik Graf, writes that these songs "seem like a quotation from another time" and convey "an attitude to life that brought with it different, more unbroken feelings than today". Their cheerfulness is fresh and there is always a harmonic or melodic surprise hidden in them.

Augsburger Allgemeine, Alois Knoller, 2020

Available via the homepage www.helmut-spanner.de  and in the download at Amazon, 

iTunes, Spotify.