Just a year on or so my balalaika dreams had moved from Offenbach where I worked in a pharmacy, to Frankfurt, where I plunged into freelance music having met the young bass singer from the Frankfurt opera named Hans Rippert who - with the help of the magic balalaikas of my TROIKA ensemble would become the world famous Iwan Rebroff.
Here the house in the Dreikoenigstrasse with a seedy pub in the basement where I conquered storey after storey and later took over even the pub and transformed it to the now still famous BALALAIKA - although now relocated a few streets away. For details of these 'hot years' of my life look for the balalaika memoirs at this address www.scribd.com/doc/21619231/Hauptmann-Balalaika |
Here the transformed place with live music from a group of young fellow musicians who I still remember fondly. Hey there I've remastered the old vinyl ' Folk Live in the Balalaika' - if any of you guys read these lines, drop me an email and I'll see that I send you a CD with your works. All this was a 'community' effort before the beaurocrats used and abused this term as they still do now.
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