Ortrud Kegel and I got to know one another at the first Bananale in 1992, at the Bruno-Goller-Haus in Gummersbach (Germany). She was playing there with Partita Radicale, her Ensemble for Improvised Music, and I was declaiming poems at the top of my lungs. In 1994, in Cologne, I approached her about whether we might not want to work together, and that’s how we founded Die Bestürzung (Bewilderment), together with Lorenz Brandlmeier and Matthias Ebbinghaus. Yet Ortrud and I performed together independently, too: in Galerie Plus in Düsseldorf in 1998; at the Mühleisen-Presse in Cologne, together with Partita Radicale, in 1999; and in the Hinterhofsalon in Cologne in 2011. In 2014 we have worked out the programme Der Brief, die Serviette (The letter, the napkin). Frederik Becker recorded our performance as a video, and Johan Vandermaelen as an audio play. A very special word of thanks to them both!

And to you friends, much pleasure from Der Brief, die Serviette!