KA’s dream was to play the piano, and it came true in 1995 when she unexpectedly acquired a grand piano in her apartment in Berlin. She started to play it in an experimental way, investigating the sounds of the instrument, and slowly developed her own style and language in improvised music. Her interest in jazz and improvised music was nourished by many fantastic concerts of traveling international musicians she was able to hear during her stay in Berlin in the nineties. All this rich experience guided her in her own progression and led to the vision and realization of the UNCOOL Festival of Jazz, Improvised Music, Ethno and Cosmo Music after she moved to Poschiavo in the southern Swiss Alps. She was able to create eight exceptional consecutive festivals from 1999 to 2012, and she also showed her own works at the festivals. KA was first onstage with Maestro Marshall Allen and Avreeayl Ra (2009), later with Manolo Cabras (2011), Riccardo Luppi, Matteo Lorito and Filippo Monico (2013), and recently also with Henry Grimes (2014). KA has also realized several sound installations based on a double spiral construction and including radio sounds, a large variety of animal voices, the rhythms of rain and thunderstorms, sounds of mountain springs and waterfalls, and her piano music.
KA’s interest in sound also includes the written and spoken word. She likes to rewrite some of the ancient tales, such as The Gordian Knot and Oedipus, but shifting the emphasis to draw attention to the actual messages of the stories that are hidden behind the common interpretation. A crucial impact was meeting the Siberian shaman Ai-Tchourek in Kyzyl, Tuva, who showed and taught KA the healing rites of shamanic tradition. Ai-Tchourek also gave KA a magic shaman drum that KA uses for healing and in performances. During her live music performances, she also uses the projection of her own digital photographs dealing with nature or light. From 2013 onwards, she has offered the Artists in Residence program at Poschiavo for gifted artists and musicians, a platform for creating new works and for concerts and exhibitions.
