Toni Stricker was born in Vienna in 1930. His mother was Viennese, his father from Burgenland. At the age of six he began learning the violin and went on to receive an extensive classical musical training at the City of Vienna Conservatory. In the years that followed he performed in numerous jazz clubs and dance halls, usually playing with his own band. Over the years he made a name for himself as a mainstream swing musician and was invited to appear at concerts and gala performances and to record in gramophone, radio and television studios in almost every country in Europe. On his return to Vienna, Toni Stricker started composing and arranging. Having spent six years as the leader of the Theater an der Wien orchestra, he was much in demand as an all-round musical talent. He wrote music for his own concert performances but also for feature films, television productions, fairy-tales and ballets and for a large number of famous actors, singers and stars of the entertainment world. In the mid-seventies Toni Stricker ended his successful career as a freelance musician from one day to the next and built a house in the Burgenland town of Bad Sauerbrunn, where he and his family went to live. Since then he has embraced the motto "Strip yourself down to the bare essentials" and has explored the roots of his own creative personality. The harmonious straight-forwardness of the people of Burgenland and the scenic beauty of the Pannonian landscape invest Toni Stricker's creative work w