Kersten Ginsberg

function: manager, drummer, producer
company: Konzertbuero Ginsberg

participation in

WOMEX 2003
WOMEX 2004
WOMEX 2006
WOMEX 2007
WOMEX 2008
virtualWOMEX
WOMEX 2011

Electrifying beat patterns in true Can and Kraftwerk tradition are Kersten Ginsberg's speciality - a 6 ft tall man, who beams away while he brings his audience into a frenzy by knocking out rhythms on the likes of a steel girder, plus a bass kick that resonates through the interior as if it were in tune with the architecture.

After being schooled in the 80s with the drummers around "Drums of Chaos" (Liebezeit, Tsangaris, Linke etc) and Intermission where he had to drum for his life with Frank Köllges, he then was sent through the mangle of some of the most progressive Krautrock bands. In the 90s he kept showing his face at some of the more anarchic "Drum Happenings" where the popularity of live club beats was growing in the Berlin music scene. A drumming terrorist that even was seen playing next to Catherine Deneuve and Guillaume Depardieu in the film "Pola X" directed by Leos Carrax.

Over a period Ginsberg and his style of beat has played the driving force, rhythm keeper and ideas man behind such projects as Adam Noidelt's Intermission, the major punks "Bad Little Dynamos", the extreme rapper "Splatterdandy" from Berlin, Amadeus winner: "Naked Lunch", the Crooner Martin Dean, Dr. Bajan and Polvorosa as well as Faust's Jochen Irmler, Neubauten's Alexander Hacke and the venerable sound artist Bob Rutman.

A large portion of heavy sounds mixed with a double helping of groove make up Ginberg's characteristic style. He has a great talent for coaxing rocking new sounds out of his part self-made drum-kit, which have echoed through the Kölner Philharmonie and the Moers Jazz Festival, Kontraste Festival in Krems, or the Klangbad Festival, as well as in the WDR-Rocknacht or on dance-floors of clubs throughout the whole of Europe. He has also co-produced some singles, which are currently receiving a lot of air play in the radio.

Today he is dedicating his time to several projects as drummer and producer.

Text: Tim Nowaki

Press and other quotes:

"Drummer Kersten Ginsberg has fused the "deutsche Schule" à la Can/Neubauten with international influences from all over - world music, hiphop, punk - to make a highly modern, very flexible and at the same time tight and groovy individual signature. On the stage he is the paragon of precision and liveliness."
Heinz Böhler, Nürtinger Zeitung

"The artist Kersten Ginsberg sits at the helm of some of the most unusual drums in the world. The raw metallic skeleton of an almost 3 meter high Cain and Abel type sculpture has been constructed for his adept hands to show an admiring public the amazing variety of new sounds that can come out of creative drumming. An amazing experience for the visitors of this art vernissage in Munich. Drumsticks extracting magical sounds out of a mythical biblical figure. Munich has never seen or heard the likes of this before."
Herbert Hauke, Rockmuseum Munich

"Your execution in rhythms and musicality are the new shapes of percussion for the future."
Len Curiel (Monks)