Klaus Paier
is a tireless, style-integrating creator amidst the European jazz scene. This means enormous luck for jazz - and for the accordion!

Variable in style, beautiful in sound and innovative, that and much more can be said about the music of Klaus Paier. The Austrian artist (*1966) has chosen jazz, improvisation, and especially the accordion as a fascinating life task. Klaus Paier today? The musician already today can look back onto a remarkable wealth of works, although he is just within the creative process.

He definitely startet early enough. When seven years old, he received his first private accordion lessons. Already at twelve years old, he started writing his own compositions and performed publicly for the first time for a radio broadcast. Curiosity about self-created music was initiated. He began to intensively explore the musical and sound possibilities of the accordion. Especially jazz he found to be a source of inspiration, and he more and more turned toward corresponding compositions - and toward free improvisation. At that time, during the 1980ies, when it came to universities, he didn't have many choices but to complete mainly classical studies. He did so at the conservatory of the region (Kärntner Landeskonservatorium) in Klagenfurt. There he learned about classical music, composing, and also jazz. Having studied he for a few years gathered artistic as well as pedagogical experiences. That eventually inspired him to publish his own, three-part accordion course "The Accordion Book" in 2013.

Even more he was drawn to the stage. He formed ensembles and played his first jazz concert in 1993. In 1996 he founded a long-lasting jazz trio with bassist Stefan Gfrerrer and drummer Roman Werni. Their debut album, released in 1998, they simply called "Accordion". Paier initiated a bunch of bands and continued them many years. Long-term, fine-tuned cooperation for him mostly is the basis for sound exploration and innovation. Especially with the trio, the accordionist did much touring. In this combo and others, he travelled the whole world, for example Canada, the United States, Japan, Vietnam, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Russia. On European stages he is a frequent guest. In 1999, Paier initiated his first duo with saxophonist and clarinetist Gerald Preinfalk. Since then, they have played numerous concerts and released two albums (More than Tango, 2000; Saion, 2006).

The year 2000 became an important turning point for Paier. He had discovered a new musical instrument in Paris one year before, the bandoneon. With that he began further expanding his creative and sound possiblities. He also had the idea to combine his trio with Gfrerrer and Werni with a string quartet and thus to create a completely new musical context. Back then, string quartets were not as present in genre-integrating areas of jazz, classical and world music as they are today. With their debut record "Movimiento" the original septet did some pioneer work. The music was received really well. It was Paier who finally convinced the string players to form a permanent quartet in 2004. It was the beginning of radio.string.quartet.vienna, that exists until today. Paier released two records as a soloist with them (radio.string.quartet feat. Klaus Paier, 2004; Radiotree, 2008). From that combination a duo with cellist Asja Valcic developed in 2009. Within ten years, several tours and four records, the two explored the possibilities of the accordion-cello-duo. Over the years, Paier received some nominations and awards. In Moscow, he was the first Austrian accordionist to be presented with the Silver Disc Award in 2011. In Austria, he was nominated several times for the Amadeus Award.

But Paier wasn't Paier, if he didn't keep on developing new things. Recently he combined his trio with Gferrer and Werni and the duo with Valcic into a new quartet. In 2018 they released the album "Cinema Scenes". Now in 2019 the accordionist has started two other bands. From the duos with Preinfalk and Valcic he formed a new trio. He created another duo with double bass player Florian Dohrmann, who has played with "David Orlowsky Trio" until the farewell tour in 2019. Tango and world music, jazz, improvisation and classical music, accordion and bandoneon, Paier for sure is going to further contribute substantially to shaping the European music scene. Not least, he likes performing as a soloist and has published a bunch of solo music. The recent list of 18 records and 24 books of sheet music is supposed to be continued. Since 2019, Paier even plays an accordion that was manufactured corresponding to his specifications and is called "Passion". After many years of preparations he now has found the ideal music instrument.