Jeff Desom is a young video artist based in Luxembourg who directed the 2008 stunning music video for German pianist Volker Bertelmann’s (a.k.a. Hauschka) “Morgenrot” featuring a burning piano falling from a high rise somewhere in New-York city. Hauschka’s superb slow motion conversation with cellists Insa Schirmer and Donsa Djember provides the soundtrack to the video.
The finished animation is mostly made from early twentieth century photographs that I found while browsing through the vast collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. I also used old postcards from New York that I purchased at a flea market in Paris. Most of the time I would only zoom into a tiny portion of the picture and utilise that as my frame. Jeff Desom
Jeff Desom’s fruitful collaboration with the pianist dates back to 2007 when both artists first collaborated on Bloksky, a short film about a composer suffering from writer’s block starring Hauschka in person. Desom also directed the music videos for “The Key” (from Foreign Landscapes – 2010) and “Radar” (from Salon des Amateurs – 2011). The artist recently caused a sensation with his Rear Window Loop (2010), a 20mn video installation based on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window which compiles all the scenes viewed from James Stewart’s point of view into a single frame. The installation was then remixed in 2012 into a shorter 3mn timelapse on Vimeo.
“Morgenrot” comes from Hauschka’s 2008 recording Ferndorf which was released on the FatCat record label.