Ep.43 Stefan Redtenbacher

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Take a Fender Jazz bass, mix Herbie Hancock with the musical heritage of Mozart, season in the conservatoire, add a dash of modern technology and marinade for half a lifetime. Step forward Stefan Redtenbacher, all-round funk wizard and leader of his band, the Redtenbacher’s Funkestra.

Born in Salzburg and educated around the world, it didn’t take long for Stefan to find himself drawn to the sound of James Brown, surely an inevitability since his parents met while dancing to ‘Sex Machine’. The relentless and visceral groove of Bootsy Collins and the JB’s surely drew Stefan into the world of funk, and at 14 he bought his first bass. “I was hooked on low rumbles,” he says. “I saved up my money from a summer job and spent it all on a bass.”

Though most popular musicians are self-taught, Stefan took the formal training route, his natural talent and capacity for study taking him from the Vienna Conservatory to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Chichester University and the Institute of Education in the UK where he assembled his Funkestra, purveyors of a deft line in what their leader, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, terms ‘Strudel Funk’.

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