PAUL WALLFISCH's music can be heard on countless American TV shows and several feature films, including Dummy starring Adrian Brody and Milla Jovovich, which he scored and also appears in. Amorous, directed by Joanna Coates, won "Best British Feature" at the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival and was released in the U.S. in 2015. Joining Swans in 2016, Paul toured with the band for two years, appearing on the 2017 live album Deliquescence and 2019’s Leaving Meaning, (Young God/Mute Records)
Entering New York's East-Village demimonde as an eighteen-year-old keyboardist in the pioneering gay comic Frank Maya's New Wave band, Paul has also lived in Europe and Los Angeles, (where he started Botanica), “…acquiring decades of world weary insights to fill his exquisitely crafted rock songs and Tom Waits-tinged ballads." * Apart from eight albums with Botanica, Paul has contributed to dozens of albums and toured North America, Europe and Asia performing and/or recording with Firewater, Love & Rockets, Congo Norvell, Angela McCluskey, Syl Sylvain, Stiv Bators, Anne Pigalle, Johnny Haliday, Marissa Nadler, Rose McGowan, Joey Arias and many more. He is the long-standing writing and performing partner of underground tortured soul legend Little Annie, producing their new album together, A Bar Too Far. 52 Jokers, a co-production of Sommerfest, Kampnagel, Volkstheater, Vienna, Noorderzon Festival, NL and Pop Kultur, Berlin, created with Annie, Beth B, Evelyn Frantti and Jim Coleman, directed and with films by Beth B, premiered in 2022. first job in the theater was music director and photographer for an adaptation of Kafka parables at the Theatre du Rond Point in Paris, while concurrently playing six sets of rock 'n roll a night at a Pigalle strip-club. Paul's acclaimed "mighty minimal" music series Small Beast, following a 4 year run at The Delancey in New York, played to sold-out rooms in Dortmund and at the Kampnagel in Hamburg.
Increasingly active as a theater composer, Paul was Music Director at the Stadttheater Dortmund, Germany from 2010-2015. Republic of Wolves, a musical theater spectacle co-created by Paul and based on Ann Sexton's adaptations of Grimm's Fairy Tales premiered in 2014, with the score performed live by The Ministry of Wolves: Paul, Alexander Hacke, Mick Harvey and Danielle DePicciotto. (Album available on Mute Records). Tom Lanoye's Queen Lear, with Paul's score, opened in Sept. 2016 at Schauspiel Frankfurt. Since then Paul has worked with acclaimed director Kay Voges on large scale multi-media productions at Staatstheater Stuttgart, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg and Volksbuehne, Berlin. Paul and Voges’ latest production Dies Irae: An Endtimes Opera opened at the Burgtheater, Vienna on December 19, 2019 with the score performed live by Paul and multi-instrumentalists Toby Dammit and Simon Goff. In November 2020, Paul started as Music Director at the Volkstheater, Vienna, scoring several productions including the Austrian premiere of Wolfram Lotz’s Die Politiker with live music by Paul and Dana Schechter, (Insect Ark). Anna-Sophie Mahler’s production of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real opens Nov. 2024 in Vienna with music written and performed by Calexico and Paul.
* The New Yorker
