Christopher Franke

Christopher Franke (born 6 April 1953 in Berlin) is a musician and composer. From 1971 to 1988 he was a member of the German electronic group Tangerine Dream. Initially a drummer with The Agitation later renamed Agitation Free, his primary focus eventually shifted to keyboards and synthesizers as the group moved away from its psychedelic rock origins. While he was not the first musician to use an analog sequencer, he was probably the first to turn it into a live performance instrument, thus laying the rhythmic foundation for classic Tangerine Dream pieces and indeed for the whole Berlin school sound.

After his departure from the group, he founded the Sonic Images record label, the Earthtone New Age Music label and the Berlin Symphonic Film Orchestra, and produced a number of solo music works. He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1991 to pursue film work. In 1995 he scored the AFI short, Requiem. He may be best known for composing the music for the science fiction television series Babylon 5, as well as the score of the anime movie Tenchi Muyo! in Love and in 2005 the music for German musical Ludwig² (with Konstantin Wecker).

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Franke. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.