Biography
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Born
22 March 1947 (age 77)
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Born In
Wien, Austria
Franz André Heller (* March 22, 1947 as Francis Charles Georges Jean André Heller-Hueart) is an Austrian artist, author, poet, singer, songwriter and actor.
As a poet songwriter his work spans across a period of more than 15 years selecting diverse topics and writing for a German-speaking audience. He has worked with international names such as Ástor Piazzolla, Dino Saluzzi, Freddie Hubbard but also with Austrian artists such as Toni Stricker, Wolfgang Ambros and Helmut Qualtinger. Heller's own poetry has been set to music. He has also sung texts by other authors. For instance, "Catherine" from 1970 was set to one of the first hits of Heller. The text came from the then still largely unknown Reinhard Mey and the music from the Austro-Canadian Jack Grunsky. Together with Werner Schneyder he created Viennese German songs translated from Jacques Brel as "Franz" (after the Brel title "Jef"). Using intimate memories of traumatic childhood experiences and insights into his life as well as his Catholic-Jewish origin he created songs with the title "Angstlied" (Verwunschen, 1980) Titles like "Miruna, die Riesin von Göteborg" (Verwunschen, 1980) are in turn influenced by the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. "Das Lied vom idealen Park" (Narrenlieder 1985) or as a duet with Wolfgang Ambros introduced the Bob Dylan cover "Für immer jung" (Stimmenhören, 1983) are now titles that are part of the Austro-pop cannon. In 1983 he appeared on Stimmenhören with the song "Erhebet euch Geliebte", a song at the time of the peace movement in the early 1980s. Since the early 1980s he turned increasingly to large public productions, installations and performances until 1982 where his concert career came to close. In 1985, the album Narrenlieder was released.
Between 1967 and 1985 he published a total of fourteen LPs, twelve of those were gold records and earned him seven times platinum.
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