Annette Ziegenmeyer was born in Hildesheim, Germany, in 1976 and has become more and more recognized for her "new" style of playing the recorder in jazz, rock and pop music as well as for her creative and innovative compositions in New Age Music.
In contrast to most musicians who are starting a professional career in music, she didn't change her first instrument, but, instead, kept to her main goal; turning the recorder into a more popular instrument.
As a versatile and multitalented musician, she also plays the piano, the saxophone as well as a rare combination of instruments called "three-whole-flute and drum".
She studied music at the conservatory of Hannover (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover). After finishing her classical studies in music education in 2001 and her studies for becoming a recorder teacher in 2002, she continued to concentrate on her main instrument, the recorder, and finished studying with Prof. Siri Rovatkay in 2003 (her comment "very good").
During her studies, she started playing the saxophone in several bands and got more and more into jazz and rock music. The idea of playing jazz standards on her recorder, instead of the saxophone, was brought up by the piano player in the band she was playing with at that time.
Against all expectations, everybody got enthusiastic about her jazzy never-heard-before "recorder-playing" and encouraged her to continue playing that way. By joining several jazz workshops with musicians such as Bobby McFerrin, Richie Beirach, Jimmy Cobb, Tuck und Patti, Chick Corea etc., Annette started to transfer the phrasing and articulation of jazz-music to the recorder.
