The following Interview was held by Christian Anrens of the NDR and Frank Peterson in February 2006.

How did you find the singers for Gregorian?
Well, although this band is casted.. they are certainly not like boy band. When we first started with Gregorian, we went to the Monte Verdi Quire in London. They were all classically trained, and they could all read from sheet music, but they did not understand the concept. Some of them said: „Who is Eric Clapton“? So we realized, that this was not the approach we needed for the records. Because I worked a lot with English classical singers and orchestras it was easy to contact people from other quires and convince them to work with us on this project. Now they are a bunch of handpicked singers with a great reputation!

What inspires you to make one successful Gregorian album after the other?
Whats driving me is that I personally like these records. If you then collect a couple of golden and platinum records and you sell three, four or even five million copies it is an extra gratification for what you’re doing. But it is not the driving force...

Every good cook has his secrets... Is there something like a Gregorian success recipe?
A lot of producers are cooks! So obviously there is something that goes in sync with producing and cooking. And I love cooking myself – it totally relaxes me. But when you cook, you can follow a couple of formulas. When I make record, I don’t have any of these recipes. I can’t write down every step I’m doing. But it is still a matter of personal taste. On a record I have to make about a million decisions, probably even more... Whatever you do – from picking the song to mixing the record... So my recipe is that I work as long I am happy and I Like my product.

Do you mostly work in your studio at home in Hamburg?
I do work a lot abroad. I produce a lot with the quire in London, often I work in Los Angeles and I have a small studio setup in Miami. But in Europe and especially here in the city of Hamburg I have my best ideas.

Would you call your records a "Homage to Gregorian chants"?
I don’t follow any purist path... I’m not trying to convince the few people in the world who are fans of real Gregorian chant music. Probably they would not really like what I’m doing. But I try to stick to the musical scales the original Gregorian chants are about, and I take the vibes and the mood of this chanting...

How difficult was it, to transfer the Gregorian project live on stage?
The easiest task was to bring the singers live on stage, because also in the studio they sing live as quire. To convince agents and concert promoters was slightly more difficult. They thought, this must be quite boring... But we work a lot with choreographies, light effects, projections and fireworks. I think its a very entertaining show!

What are your plans in the near future - in terms of live shows?
We are going on tour in May for about 20 concerts in Germany. Then we’ll have a break during the world soccer cup, because half of our singers want to see England loose ;-))) Then we tour again in August and September for another 50 shows in Europe. Also we plan to go to Asia and Australia...

Do you have any idea, how many awards you got as a producer?
I don’t really know how many awards I got. In total have probably around 120... with Gregorian around 40 or 50? I know that we sold close to four million albums and that we are gold and platinum in about 15 countries.

Do these awards make you proud?
I would lie if I would say something like "I couldn’t care less". But what makes me more proud is the way I achieved that. With music like this it is against the odds. You don’t get radio support and you don’t get constantly invited to TV Shows... If I compare it to the winner of Pop-Idol or to the German equivalent "Deutschland sucht den Superstar"... mostly we sell a lot more records, but without finding ourselves on the FrontPages of newspapers and stupid magazines. It makes me proud, that I achieved so much against the odds... That’s cool!

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