Christopher Franke

Born in Berlin on April 6, 1953, Christopher Franke studied classical music and composition at the Berlin Conservatory before becoming a longtime participant in the groundbreaking electronic group Tangerine Dream. During his time with the jazz-rock band Agitation Free, he and his mentor, Swiss avant-garde composer Thomas Kessler, established a sound studio and began offering courses in improvisation that helped form the basis of the Berlin School of Electronic Music. Through that connection Franke encountered Edgar Froese and Peter Baumann, resulting in his joining Tangerine Dream in 1970. He remained with the ensemble for nearly two decades, during which he broadened the reach of electronic music on landmark albums such as Zeit, Atem, and Phaedra as well as film scores including Sorcerer, Risky Business, and Legend. Among the earliest musicians to exploit the synthesizer’s full range, Franke developed fresh approaches to using sequencers as percussion instruments, thereby shaping the dense, throbbing texture that defined the group’s sound in the mid- to late 1970s. He exited Tangerine Dream in 1988 to pursue a solo path and moved to Los Angeles two years later to concentrate on film scoring. In 1991 he formed the Berlin Symphonic Film Orchestra (BSFO) and released his first solo album, Pacific Coast Highway. Three years later he launched his own imprint, Sonic Images, which subsequently issued collections of his music for the syndicated science-fiction series Babylon 5 along with further solo projects. Perry Rhodan Pax Terra appeared in 1996, followed by Epic in 1999.