Michael Dinner
Panpipe | German speaking part of Switzerland
Offer
Michael Dinner plays accompanied by harp, organ or piano. On a smaller scale, he also likes to play solo. His repertoire is extremely diverse: popular melodies, classical music, folklore and – he is always open to new things!
Michael Dinner, Zurich
Instrument: Panpipe
Phone: +41 (0)44 861 17 37
E-Mail: send e-mail
Website: http://www.panfloete.ch
About me
Actually, Ennio Morricone is to blame for Michael Dinner’s dedication to the pan flute, or more precisely Morricone’s soundtrack to “Once upon a time in America”. The melancholy sounds of that pan flute fascinated him as a child. He wanted to be able to play like that. He would never have dreamed that one day he would take lessons with Gheorghe Zamfir, the man who played the pan flute in Morricone’s film music, when he first took pan flute lessons at the age of ten.
It soon became apparent that Dinner’s choice was the right one. “I was poisoned,” he says and recounts with a mischievous smile how his mother sometimes asked him to stop when he practised the same passage over and over again. The commitment bore fruit: already as a teenager he took over the leadership of his pan flute group; soon he had his first pupils.
Nevertheless, Dinner did not pursue a career as a professional musician for the time being, but learned to be an architectural draughtsman. The turning point came in 1997 when Dinner was able to take over the studio of the late panpipe maker Thierry Tutellier. The then 23-year-old knew little about panpipe making, although he had often been in Tutellier’s studio during his lifetime and had obtained the instruments for his students there. “Thierry Tutellier made a big secret of panpipe making,” says Dinner. “He never told me anything about it.”
From then on, Dinner focused entirely on music. And he made his first contacts in Romania, the country whose folklore had taken a fancy to him. The impetus came from the virtuoso Romanian pan flutist Dan Herford. Herford in turn sought contacts in Switzerland and came across Dinner’s homepage – the first website for panpipes in Switzerland. The two men became friends; since 2000 they have regularly organised the internationally recognised Swiss Panflute Seminar, one of the most successful seminars in the world. It is thanks to Dinner that Switzerland today has a name in Bucharest when it comes to panpipes. But also for Dinner himself, the collaboration with Herford was a stroke of luck, because in this way he became acquainted with several great masters of the pan flute in recent years: “They gave me valuable insights into the essence of folklore.”
In search of the roots of the music he loved so much, Dinner was soon drawn to Romania. Dan Herford willingly took the young musician with him and gave him his first contacts in the Bucharest pan flute scene. Today he is known there as the Swiss who plays Romanian folklore, as if Romanian blood flowed in his veins. He has won awards at several festivals in Bucharest. He played with the “Cununa Carpatilor” orchestra under the direction of conductor Gheorghe Popa, and he performed accompanied by Marin Alexandru’s orchestra. He attended master classes with Gheorghe Zamfir. “That opened up a new world for me,” Dinner recounts. “Zamfir taught me the philosophy of the pan flute.” Nevertheless, he has remained modest: “If I hover one metre above the ground with my panpipe playing, then the great masters are on the moon.”
Today, Michael Dinner is mainly active as a panpipe teacher, publisher of panpipe sheet music and panpipe maker. He completed a music pedagogical training in pan flute at the ZHDK on the second educational path. And of course he continues to give concerts from time to time.