Reinhold Heil

Reinhold Heil
Reinhold Heil, 2015
Born	(1954-05-18) 18 May 1954 (age 62) Schlüchtern, West Germany
Occupation	Film composer
Years active	1974–present

Reinhold Heil (born 1954) is a German-born film and television composer based in Los Angeles. He is known for his frequent collaborations with Australian composer Johnny Klimek and director Tom Tykwer on films such as Run Lola Run and Cloud Atlas.

Heil was born in Schlüchtern, in the state of Hesse, West Germany. He grew up twenty meters from Schlüchtern's 10th century monastery, where he was introduced to classical music. Heil learned to play church organ at a young age and in adolescence began training to become a pianist. In his teenage years, Heil's father, who owned the town's only record and hi-fi store, put Heil in charge of selecting all the records sold in his store, inadvertently giving Heil access to the most influential pop music of the times. Heil eagerly immersed himself in rock, soul, jazz, and electronic music.

After graduating from high school in the mid 1970s, Heil left Schlüchtern for West Berlin. At the time, West Berlin was an island of western culture isolated in the middle of communist East Germany and a fertile breeding ground for experimentation and artistic and political self-expression.

While a student at the Berlin Music Academy, Heil supplemented his studies of classical music with studies in musique concrète and early electronic music. He was deeply influenced by pioneering jazz and rock musicians such as Miles Davis and Frank Zappa.

In 1977, Heil met a dissident artist from communist East Germany, the young Nina Hagen, who was electrifying Berlin's punk world with her powerful operatic voice and genre-defying musical style. Hagen asked Heil to join her band as her keyboardist, co-writer and co-producer and for the next few years Heil honed his craft what became the legendary Nina Hagen Band. After Hagen left the group to pursue a solo career, the remaining band members formed Spliff, one of Germany's most successful rock bands of the 1980s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Heil was widely regarded as one of the best keyboardists in Europe. He is also known as the producer of German Neue Deutsche Welle band Nena's albums and singles, including the hit songs "99 Luftballons" (1983) and "Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann" (1984).