Under the label Mendelsson – unlike the Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn… Read Full Bio ↴Under the label Mendelsson – unlike the Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn the name here is being written without the "h" – Norbert Grandl and Leonhard Lorek subsumed their works which had been realised in the Berlin based Setalite Studio from the year 2000 on.

Already in the 80ies they had been taking active part in various bands of East Berlin’s subculture. Among others Grandl was involved in Expander des Fortschritts, Lorek in z.art and la deutsche vita. Both were involved in teurer denn je – where Grandl was drumming as a seventeen-year-old –, in the avant-garde group fett, and also in the 1994 album Musik Wird Niemals Langsam together with Michael Dubach, Nino Sandow and Max Goldt (45/Indigo), and two years later in "brauchen" (45/festland, Indigo) by Dubach Deut.

For the first time the band’s name Mendelsson appears in 2003 on the occasion of the release of Storagemanagementadministrationssuitesalesm on the CD compilation "Neue Berliner Initiative 02" put together by the Berlin based NBI Club. The video to the music had been filmed by Anna Wagner in the following year.

At the same time the piece White Canary – sung by Holger Lehmann and Laura Waschkeit – had been released on the eponymous 12" EP on the Berlin based label Fein Raus. It features remixes by Jahcoozi, Kyborg, Brigade Mondaine and Trike.

Lehmann – initially involved in the studio work as guest vocalist – had become a full member of the band by that time. However, diverging visions of approaches to music had lead to the fact that Mendelsson continued the work on their 2005 studio album with the Italian singer and guitarist Sandro Chiesura.

Already in teurer denn je and in fett a great deal of attention had been paid to prosody* – the rhythmics and melodics of language – as compositional element of music. In Mendelsson the interest in the sonority of speech is extended to multilingualism. Besides pieces in German and Italian, on their album "31.". there are three versions of the track "Schrittmacher" in the language combinations German-Italian, German-Mandarin and German-Turkish.

The presentation of the album in the internet had been originally conceived as pure PR campaign by the band: On the key date of every month with 31 days – hence the album title "31." – the artists put a new piece from "31." on their MySpace page.

In the period that followed the continuing presence in the net considerably changed both the self-conception and the working methods of Mendelsson. It also entailed a personal enhancement of the band: From 2008 on Evgenij Dvorkin consolidates the impulses in the creative work. This had lead to collaborations with visual artists and to medium-dated forms of performance and concept art in the internet. An other consequence is the increasing development of Mendelsson as a world-wide acting, virtual music ensemble with the proviso "Good pop music is the extraordinary combination of ordinariness".

Mendelsson on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mendelsson/122898874458144?sk=app_178091127385

Discography:

2003 – Storagemanagementadministrationssuitesalesman
2004 – White Canary
2008 – 31.

*LOREK, Leonhard: Poesie. Akademie. Prosodie. Alles was knirscht. in: PEHLEMANN, Alexander, GALENZA, Ronald: Spannung. Leistung. Widerstand. - Magnetbanduntergrund DDR 1979-1990. Berlin 2006. S. 128 – 135