Michael Oder­matt was born on March 23, 1989 in Lucerne, Switzer­land and grew up in the Emmen agglom­er­a­tion. There he found his way to music as a child.

WHEN HE DISCOVERED A LARGE BLACK GRAND PIANO AT AN EVENT OF THE MUSIC SCHOOL IN EMMEN AT THE YOUNG AGE OF SIX, HE WAS CAPTIVATED BY THIS INSTRUMENT AND ITS MASSIVE POWER AND PRESENCE.

At the age of six he com­plet­ed a year of gen­er­al basic music edu­ca­tion with a focus on melody, har­mo­ny, rhythm and com­po­si­tion, fol­lowed by a year of piano lessons for two.

MICHAEL COLLECTED MUSICAL EXPERIENCES IN GROUPS EARLY – THE FIRST YEAR OF PIANO LESSONS WAS LEARNING TO PLAY THE PIANO FOUR HANDED WITH ANOTHER PIANO STUDENT.

After that he con­cen­trat­ed eight years on a clas­si­cal piano edu­ca­tion indi­vid­u­al­ly with Ital­ian piano teacher Giuseppe Mure­na. At the annu­al con­cert he played in front of a large audience.

MICHAEL PLAYED CLASSICAL WORKS BY GREAT COMPOSERS WHO HE DEFINITELY WANTED TO GET TO KNOW PERSONALLY. HE HAD QUESTIONS HOW THEY FEEL THE MUSIC AND WHAT THEY WANTED TO EXPRESS. WHEN HE LEARNED THAT MOST OF THEM HAD ALREADY DIED, HE COULDN’T UNDERSTAND THAT HE SHOULD PLAY THEIR MUSIC.

In addi­tion to clas­si­cal music, which he found dif­fi­cult to access, Michael devel­oped a great inter­est in intu­itive piano play­ing and began express­ing his own melodies and com­po­si­tions at an ear­ly age. Nev­er­the­less, it was only lat­er that he real­ized how much music he real­ly had inside of him.

WHEN HE FINALLY MANAGED TO PLAY FELT AND HEARD MUSIC ON THE PIANO IN HIS EARLY TEENAGE YEARS, HE WAS UNSTOPPABLE AND LITERALLY BUBBLED WITH ENTHUSIASM. HE WANTED TO CREATE MORE DEPTH AND MULTIPLE FACETS WITH OTHER INSTRUMENTS. HE FOUNDED HIS FIRST BAND AT THE AGE OF 16 TO EXPERIMENT INTENSIVELY WITH IT.

At the same time he took over the cov­et­ed pianist posi­tion in the band of the nation­al­ly known gospel choir «Lord Singers» under the direc­tion of musi­cian and teacher Jörg Heeb for five years. With Jörg as con­duc­tor, who was a great musi­cal men­tor to Michael as a grad­u­ate of the Con­ser­va­to­ry, he per­formed week­ly in church­es, the­aters and con­cert halls. At the same time, he cul­ti­vat­ed more and more inten­sive exchanges with oth­er musi­cians. In the rehearsal rooms of estab­lished bands, he gained his first expe­ri­ences with fel­low musi­cians. From this arose their first own band with him as band leader. He was their pianist and became their lead gui­tarist. Because he learned to play the gui­tar inde­pen­dent­ly as a sec­ond instru­ment out of his own inter­est and began to work on larg­er com­po­si­tions and arrange­ments. As a young musi­cal direc­tor, he began work­ing inten­sive­ly with singers and instru­men­tal­ists, includ­ing the Zug singer “Shamin” and Natascha (today inter­na­tion­al­ly known as the singer of the reg­gae band “Base­ment Roots”), to devel­op a grow­ing reper­toire, which meant that he was on stage more and more often.

MICHAEL WROTE HIS OWN PIECES OF MUSIC AND PERFORMED LIVE WITH THEM FROM AN EARLY AGE. INITIALLY ON A SMALLER SCALE, LATER ON LARGER OCCASIONS SUCH AS THE EMMEN YOUNG CITIZENS’ CELEBRATION IN THE GERSAG HALL IN FRONT OF HUNDREDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE.