Carmen Stefanescu
I have loved classical music since early childhood and even as little Carmen I couldn't get enough of the Beethoven and Mozart records that my mother - who was working as a sound engineer for the radio in Bucharest at the time - brought home. A piano soon came into the house and these 88 keys became the center of my life and my great love.

My parents fled the Ceausescu regime with me when I was 7 years old. Our escape took us via Israel and Italy to Germany, which became our new home. Even before we had furniture, a piano was brought into the house - a beautiful little "Bechstein" on which I tried to emulate my idol Arthur Rubinstein.

At the age of ten, Prof. Ulla Graf accepted me as a young student at the Aachen University of Music. In the years that followed, I won numerous competitions and prizes, played concerts with orchestra and solo. When I turned 18, I no longer wanted to be limited by genre boundaries and rules, not in music and not in life. The next ten years, in which I played as a keyboard player in various bands, were eventful, exciting - yes, crazy. Good music touches the soul, no matter what genre it is assigned to. My soul is touched by Debussy, Poulenc, Brahms and Chopin, but also Chick Corea and Bill Evans. So I began studying piano at the Cologne University of Music and graduated with distinction.

Then Leipzig became my home. I played music in this wonderful music city with soloists from the Gewandhaus, the MDR Orchestra and the Sinfonia London and I made friends for life. In Leipzig I discovered my love for song accompaniment by fantastic singers such as Carolin Masur and Laetitia Grimaldi Spitzer. I also met the wonderful pianist Irwin Gage in the Pleissem metropolis, who supported and inspired me for several years in his master classes in Florence. The special prize for the best Poulenc interpretation at the International Grieg Competition in Oslo for the piano duo with the pianist Juliane Tautz crowned this musical stage of my life.

Finally, in 2011, I was drawn back to the Rhineland. Since then, I have lived and taught in Cologne. Here I recorded my first solo CD "Kaleidoscope of Life", here I met the clarinetist Pamela Coats, with whom I released the CD "Paris mon Amour", and here I found the GOLDKORN ensemble, with whom I make music that touches the soul across genres. I have always been suspicious of straight paths and predetermined paths. So I found my own path, which is wonderfully uneven, full of detours. "Detours increase local knowledge" - as Kurt Tucholsky already knew.