Wolfgang was born in 1978 in Frankfurt, Germany to musician parents who played in a renaissance music troupe. One of his first memories is going into a music studio with his parents and singing into a microphone and then being really disappointed that he didn't hear anything (he didn't have the headphones on!). He started playing stringed instruments before he can remember, his first one being a ukulele. In elementary school, Wolfgang received some classical training on the piano, started spending more time with his acoustic guitar and finally started playing electric guitar around age 13. Still in Frankfurt, and listening to all kinds of music from everywhere, Wolfgang soaked up influences from lots of different genres (metal, hip hop, techno, rock, classical, funk, jazz, blues,etc.) Whatever the style, Wolfgang probably went through an intensive phase learning about it. Wolfgang played in a number of non-gigging bands, joined the Frankfurt punk band Broken for a while and worked at a major TV and radio station, seemingly getting stuck working in tech, only dreaming about music.
In August, 2003 everything changed. Wolfgang came to New York and stayed at the Jazz in the Park hostel on the Upper West Side. It was here that he met his future wife during the big blackout of 2003 (which took out almost the entire East Coast for over 12 hours) A month later Wolfgang had quit his tech job, was engaged, and living in Portland, jamming with established musicians like former Country Joe and the Fish-bassist Stevie Barsotti. Life would never be the same.
About six months later Wolfgang embarks on what, in retrospect, might be the world’s slowest-moving world tour traveling from Frankfurt to New York, Portland (Oregon), Oakland (California), Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Greece, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Oakland, Berkeley, Las Vegas, Portland, Eugene, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Marin County, Mendocino County, Modesto (California) and finally back to Portland, playing shows and parties and writing original material on the way. He also worked on the crews of several major event productions from the String Cheese Incident New Years Eve '06-'07 celebration in San Francisco and the Vegoose festival in 2006 and 2007 (Las Vegas event w/ Tom Petty, Phil Lesh, Trey Anastasio, Les Claypool, Widespread Panic, Mickey Hart, Keller Williams, String Cheese Incident, Cat Power, lots of others),to Earthdance Laytonville (Ani DiFranco, India Arie, Tea Leaf Green, Michael Franti & Spearhead...) and the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival.
Wolfgang currently resides in Portland’s Alberta Arts District where he is recording his first studio album and gigging as Wolfgang (Wolfgang’s originals with vocals), The Rizomatic Orchestra/Wolfgang’s Rizomatic Experiments (all improv., all instrumental), and as lead guitarist for Good Luck Buddha (female-fronted psychedelic rock). For booking and further information, please contact lockey@rizomaticorchestra.com.