A Sunday in September, breakfast, the arts pages of the Sunday paper half open — and somewhere between culture and comment, my own photograph is looking back at me. Full page, headline feature: „Leander sorgt für den Groove" (Leander brings the groove). A young man in an orange beanie, an alto saxophone in one hand, a bass guitar in the other. I know exactly when that frame was made. I also know that on that particular day, he was never supposed to be the story.
Rewind to earlier this year. February 2026, studio. Lorenz Raab had come in for a fresh set of artist portraits — principal trumpet at the Vienna Volksoper, a fixture in the city's jazz scene, and a Schagerl artist. Sessions like these fall into my Schagerl-side work; the players who make music on those horns end up on our side of the camera too. Lorenz brought his trumpet, his calm — and, which I hadn't seen coming, his son. Seventeen, quiet, not one to fill silences. A saxophone case slung over one shoulder.
After we finished with Lorenz, he asked, almost as an afterthought, whether I could quickly do a couple of portraits of Leander as well. Of course. I reset the light. Leander unpacked the alto sax and, from another case, a bass guitar he'd brought along too — turns out he plays both, plus piano, plus tuba, as I would later learn from the newspaper. My decision was easy: if two instruments are already in the room, both go into the frame.
Black backdrop, a soft rim light from the upper right, just enough to catch the gold of the sax's keys and the petrol-blue lacquer of the bass so that both instruments read cleanly. He held the sax high on the crook, the bass tucked under his arm, eyes down. Nothing posed. A boy who handles two instruments the way other seventeen-year-olds handle their phone. It didn't take many frames — portraits like these either arrive quickly or not at all.
Six months on, September 20th, I'm sitting at breakfast turning pages, and there it is. The piece by Daniela Tomasovsky spells out what I hadn't known that afternoon in the studio: Leander plays with the Klosterneuburg Big Band, the Lower Austrian Youth Jazz Orchestra in Grafenegg, the mdw's „Young Masters." First prizes at Prima la Musica, gigs with Jumping Jungle at Vienna's Porgy & Bess. He also attends the Graphische — because film and technology interest him too. Father: principal trumpet. Mother: piano teacher. Both sisters: musical. You read the piece and think, of course.
As a photographer you never know which frame from which session will end up with a life of its own. Sometimes it's the one you planned as the hero. More often it's the on-the-side portrait that happens because someone asks whether you might quickly — and you say yes. The Sunday morning, with coffee and paper in hand, is the small reward for saying yes.
All the best to Leander for whatever comes next. Whenever he's on a stage next — the Babenberger Halle, Grafenegg, Porgy & Bess, wherever — I hope there's someone with a camera who enjoys watching as much as I did that afternoon in the studio. The talent clearly runs in the family.
