Alfred J. Brettnacher

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I was born in a small town in western Germany, near the border to France and Luxembourg.
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In my family everyone is very musical; my grandfather was an organist in a church for many years. My father also played the organ, the guitar and was in a male choir.
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In the mid 1970's my father built a three-manual Dr. Böhm FnT with a 30 key pedal, on which I received lessons from a private teacher when I was four and a half years old. After some time piano lessons and harmonic theory were added.

At the age of fourteen I started playing at weddings, birthday parties and many other festivities. Before that my father and I built our second Böhm organ, a Top Sound DS. To this organ I later added a Böhm Expander Dynamic 12/24, the world's first MIDI sound generator.

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In the late 1980s I moved to Munich and built my first own organ, a Böhm Musica Digital 810 XL with 13 key pedal on chromium pillars.
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During the following years I modified this organ to the model Musica Digital 910 and then to the DIAMANT 200 CT-M. This instrument accompanied me for another eight years.
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I played demo's for the Böhm team in Munich and I also built Böhm equipment for other musicians. One of the Böhm Midi Control 19″ devices I built is still used by the German Jazz Organist Barbara Dennerlein up until today. Since 1994 I am the Demo Organist of the Böhm Orgel-Center Süd of Martin Lutz in Kaufbeuren, the Böhm dealer in the south of Germany.
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At the end of the 1990's I received an offer from the Böhm headquarters in Bad Oeyenhausen to own a DIAMANT 300 CT-M (see left picture). This instrument was the concert and show instrument of the late Mark Shakespeare. I recorded my first studio album "Diamonds Of Music" with this instrument in early 1998. During the recordings in the Netherlands I was supported by DirkJan Ranzijn. A special thank you to Janie and Rob Reynolds for you generosity. The time with you was great.
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After this organ had been brought up to the latest technical standard in May 1999 with the conversion to the DIAMANT 350 CT model, I was already planning another recording. In November 2000 a single CD with "Ride Like the Wind" by Christopher Cross, as well as "Jessie" by Joshua Kadison was released under my record label TFM Records - Time For Music. "Ride Like the Wind" was also published on the CD "Key Sensations Volume II", (OKEY! Ausgabe Nr. 45 – März/April 2002) of the OKEY! the german magazine for organ and keyboard.