Stefan Hantel, aka Shantel, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. He studied graphic design and art history in Paris, among other places, and has been an internationally acclaimed all-around electronica musician since the mid 1990s. In 2003, he produced and curated the Bucovina Club at schauspielfrankfurt. Shantel is a one-of-a-kind artist with an international following. He has released numerous albums in a broad range of styles that have received awards all around the globe. He has also appeared at hundreds of concerts, festivals and clubs. Shantel has long been turning pop-culture clichés and conventionally defined genres inside out. When he and his Bucovina Club Orkestar take the stage – filling the performance space by transforming global sounds into compact, anarchic hymns – eclecticism and escapism become virtually one and the same.
In 2006, Shantel won a BBC Award for World Music in the “Club Global” category.
Awards: Winner of a BBC Award for World Music in 2006 / Number 1 on the World Music Chart for Europe in July 2005 and Number 10 on the 2005 Annual Chart / Best Album of 2005 (Songlines) / Best World Music Album of 2005 (Concerto)
Disko Partizani, his most successful album to date, made the Top 20 on many European charts. It also stayed at the top spot in Turkey for weeks and went platinum throughout Southeast Europe. Shantel has written film music for Fatih Akin and Sasha Baron Cohen. He has played the Cannes Film Festival and was one of the first German musicians to perform at the legendary Glastonbury Festival in the UK. He has also appeared in Montreux (where he performed before his visibly moved colleagues Prince and Quincy Jones) and at Milan Fashion Week, the Cerventino Festival in Mexico and the Tim Festival in Rio de Janeiro (with co-headliners Daft Punk and the Beastie Boys), not to mention at all of the globe’s other major music festivals. After many years persistently developing a base in Europe, Shantel has become an international celebrity. Having performed together more than 1,000 times, he and the Bucovina Club Orkestar put on a show of the highest caliber, creating an intimate connection with the audience that is both expert and intoxicating.
“There is no other German musician who can cast such a spell, regardless of whether he’s performing in a major city in Greece, Italy or France, or at a mega rock event such as the UK’s Glastonbury Festival or Denmark’s Roskilde Festival. Shantel creates his incredible sounds – and everyone immediately starts to dance.” (www.hunderttausend.de).
The “European phenomenon” (Vogue)