DEMO-ART

Official Homepage of Volker Rapp
a.k.a.
DEMO ART

Last update: November 6 1999

The most exciting thing to do is to perform ideas in a form which everybody understands and can interpretate in the same way as me. It doesn't matter which form I choose, (painting, graphics, lyrics or music) it has to work with everyone...
Volker Rapp was born 1964 in Wuppertal. At the age of 9 years he took accordion lessons for 5 years. After that he learned to play mandolin by himself. At the age of 16 he decided to take guitar lessons, which opened the world for him to play lead guitar in a many groups.

In his early tweens he wasn't satisfied with the abilities of guitar sound and decided to go back to keyboards. For the next decade he played in more than 20 groups, whatever styile was required (Latin, Fusion, Jazz, Pop etc.), while all the while still composing his own music. Now there was a collection of about 25 hours music in a variety of styles. So it was no problem for him in the early nineties to improvise in performing art groups. He toured in a lot of galleries and other non traditional places to be "on stage". It wasn't the normal way like playing in halls, restaurants or bars. He founded his own performing group DEMO ART and taped up some events on the MC "earth-beat" in 1993.
That was followed, in 1994, by the first CD release "Seven Pillars of Wisdom". It describes the foundation of cultures round the Mediterranean which he visited on several journeys to Egypt, Greece, Jordan and Turkey.
This album contains his preference for Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Mike Batt, Alan Parsons Project and Chick Corea.

The album was presented 5 times with a huge dia-slide-show on stage for more than 1500 visitors from winter 1994 to spring 1995.
To these self organized events, which he selforganized, he invited several artists like Ron Boots and Mind over Matter.

At that time the continuing broadcast of "Schwingungen" on WDR 1 was in real danger. He organized an underwriting collection on his concerts... We all know what happens then...

At the end of a decade of electronic-music-broadcasting he developed the biggest concert in FRG in 1995. The project was called "The history of Schloß Burg" (Geschichte von Schloß Burg), a castle between the towns Solingen and Remscheid. It was performed in the knighthall of the marvelous castle with Winfrid Trenkler as narrator for the historic episodes of the castle which are painted on the knighthall walls. With him on stage were Ron Boots and his friends Tony (trumpet) and Eric van der Heijden (keyboards). At his side Peter Nica played the guitars.

One year after the end of "Schwingungen" he organized the project "Three Dimensions" with John Kerr and Ron Boots. All were supported by the van der Heijdens: Harold (drums), Eric (keyboards) and Tony(trumpet). It was one of the biggest events in 1996 and also taped. We hope to release it someday.

Ron asked Volker for some material for the follow-up album to "Out there lies the truth". You can hear the result on "The truth is Twisted" with two tracks, one with Ron and the other with Eric.

Schloß Burg was the first step in a series of CDs which are exclusively released on GROOVE Unlimited. Volker wants to create more "historic inspired music" by using special towns or landmarks as concert sites.

So in September 1996 he placed the concert hall in a traffic vehicle. Returning to his birthplace, Wuppertal, the concert took place on September 28 1996 in the world's most unique and safest Mono- Rail-Way: The Schwebebahn.

The optical side of the concert was the look out of the Schwebebahn. The latest CD "Faces of the town Wuppertal" (Gesichter der Stadt Wuppertal) was performed six times in sold out concerts Other performers were Tony van der Heijden (trumpet) and Volker Zimmer (sax). There is no doubt, it was the first concert ever given in this public traffic vehicle since the construction in 1900!

On August 11 1999 he did a life performance with Amaryllis on vocals. From this concert is a CD-R available called ToSoFi 11.Aug 1999.