Founding Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt to drop contemplative new album ‘Requiem’ in April 2026
Irmin Schmidt (Photo by Robin Maddock)
German composer and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt will release his new album “Requiem” on 24 April 2026 via Mute Records and Future Days Music (Spoon) on vinyl, CD and digital formats. A detail many don’t realize, but born in Berlin in 1937, Irmin Schmidt turns 89 in 2026 and he still continues to extend his solo career with new work.
“Requiem” is presented in two long movements and mixes environmental recordings with prepared and unprepared piano. Schmidt recorded sounds around his home in southern France, including birds, water and frogs, after first capturing a nightingale in his garden that prompted the project’s initial sessions.
Below is a first excerpt.
He describes his approach like this: “In nature I find so much music, and that becomes a kind of dialogue.” The piano parts were recorded spontaneously and later edited in collaboration with long-time engineer René Tinner.
Irmin Schmidt characterises “Requiem” as a meditation on remembrance, loss and commemoration, with the slow movement between piano and environmental sound designed to leave space for individual reflection. The focus on prepared and unprepared piano directly links back to his earlier piano-centred album “5 Klavierstücke” and the concert recording “Nocturne (Live at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival)”.
Pre-orders for the new album, including signed art-card editions on heavyweight vinyl and CD, are available now via Bandcamp as well.
About Irmin Schmidt
Berlin-born composer and pianist Irmin Schmidt studied classical piano, conducting and composition, including work with Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti, before turning towards experimental rock and improvisation in the late 1960s. In 1968 he co-founded the Cologne-based group Can with Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit, integrating avant-garde composition techniques, tape editing and improvisation into a rock context that became a reference point for krautrock and experimental music.
Alongside his work with Can, Schmidt developed a substantial body of film and television music from the late 1970s onwards, scoring more than 40 productions including “Knife in the Head” (1978) and “Palermo Shooting” (2008). His solo discography began with the “Filmmusik” series in 1980 and grew through albums such as “Toy Planet”, “Musk at Dusk”, “Impossible Holidays” and the large-scale opera “Gormenghast”, which premiered at the Opernhaus Wuppertal on 15 November 1998.
Excerpts from “Gormenghast” later appeared on CD, and the work returned to the stage with a new production at the Schauspielhaus in Linz in 2025. Irmin Schmidt has lived in the Provence in southern France for several decades, working from a home studio that also serves as the location for many of his recent piano and environmental recordings, including those heard on “Requiem”.
In compilation form, the solo and soundtrack work by Irmin Schmidt was first brought together on the 2-CD set “Villa Wunderbar / A Selection”, released in November 2013 by Spoon Records and Mute with sleeve notes by Wim Wenders. This was followed in 2015 by the 12-CD box set “Electro Violet”, a career-spanning retrospective compiling his solo albums and extensive film music from 1981 onwards, accompanied by an 80-page booklet.
His later work has increasingly focused on piano. “5 Klavierstücke”, released in November 2018 on Mute / Spoon, presented five solo pieces recorded and produced by Gareth Jones in southern France, combining prepared and unprepared piano techniques that Schmidt traces back to his studies with John Cage. The live album “Nocturne (Live at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival)”, released in May 2020, documented his 2019 appearance at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with reworked material from “5 Klavierstücke”.
Schmidt has remained closely involved with the ongoing archival work around Can and his own work with releases such as the “Electro Violet” box set, the piano album “5 Klavierstücke”, the compilation “Villa Wunderbar”, and the live series “Can Live in Brighton 1975”, “Can Live in Cuxhaven 1976” and “Can Live in Paris 1973”, all issued via Mute / Future Days Music / Spoon Records since 2021.
Beyond recording, Schmidt co-authored the two-part book “All Gates Open: The Story of Can” with writer Rob Young, published in 2018 by Faber and Faber, combining a band biography with a collage-style “Can Kiosk” section. He has also been recognised with the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier, 2015) and, in 2025, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his contribution to music and culture.
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