I started rather late, in 1992, and at the moment (2012) this was exactly 20 years ago. I had a broken heart and decided to buy a keyboard to get over it... ;-)

I guess this was by German rock singer Klaus Lage, in Mannheim, 1987, with an old friend - but it wasn't really special. Much more memorable was a few weeks later, when I saw Deep Purple in Heidelberg for the first time (I used to be the BIGGEST Purple fan You can imagine...). They even had Bad Company to open for them. It was unbelievable loud, and I lost my glasses while headbanging... ;-)

I use very humble, mostly already old equipment on the edge of breakdown (for the simple reason that I can't afford anything else...).

My main tool still is my trusty Mac G4 from 2003, still running with Mac OS 9 and the old Cubast VST 5 - with tons of VST instruments and effects that I combine in many, sometimes adventurous ways - most freeware or shareware, some commercial. My favorite software maybe still is the NI Absynth...

Live I use a Waldorf Blofeld Synth (desktop version) which I bought in 2009, together with an M-Audio Oxygen master keyboard and a rather old, not very sensational Korg sound modul for some additional sounds (always forget it's name, something like 08-15 XYZ).

Ehrm. Listeners...?! ;-)

There were so many. There still are so many more... But for a start: Klaus Schulze is by far my favorite (electronic) musician. Then - everybody else, like Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, Aphey Twin, Peter Michael Hamel, Future Sound of London...and 10.000 brilliant musicians more.

I'm mostly solo, but I was involved in a local art rock trio called B4 SUNRISE since the year 2000, however this project fell into a hiatus one or two years ago, but shall soon be resurrected... We were partly inspired by King Crimson, David Sylvian, Frank Zappa, Dead Can Dance - and all the other usual suspicious, if You're into that kind of stuff...

Again, there are so many - I would love to jam all day with all kinds of great musicians.
But maybe it would be especially cool to jam with the excellent classical/jazz cellist Wolfgang Tiepold, who also has collaborated with Klaus Schulze in the past...

Unfortunately, I don't have the chance to really play live often - so at the moment, the biggest audience may have been about 70 people at the small RaumZeit Festival 2012 in Dortmund - and the smallest just one (people - HAHA!)

"Audentity" by Klaus Schulze. Because to me it is THE BEST ALBUM EVER RECORDED ON THIS PLANET (...in capital letters!). Then, it also has Tiepold on it... ;-)