About me

My name is Paul Rittel and I have been working full-time as a self-employed professional cellist, pianist & keyboardist, singer, composer, improviser, producer and music teacher since around 2014. I have long felt at home in various musical worlds - rock & pop, classical, jazz and "world music". I also play electric bass and percussion, have a lot of experience with recording and live sound engineering, audio effects and mixing, and in interdisciplinary collaboration with other art forms.

I was born in 1993 in Bonn (Germany). At the age of 5 I began taking cello lessons at the music school of the city of Bonn, and at the age of 9 I also started piano lessons there. Even as a young child I discovered my joy in freely improvising on both instruments and wrote my first own compositions—both classical pieces and pop songs.

In my childhood and youth I played in several orchestras (e.g., the youth orchestra of the Bonn Opera and the church orchestra of the Lutherkirche Bonn) and chamber music ensembles (e.g., an award-winning, long-standing piano trio with my Bonn peers Jella Linnert and Konstantin Schürholt). I also founded my first own jazz and pop bands (e.g., “Klangfabrik”) and played as a soloist in the school big band of the "Integrierte Gesamtschule Bonn-Beuel".

Thus, even back then I already gained diverse experiences in various musical worlds.

From 2009–2010 I studied classical cello at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen (GER) with Prof. Alexander Hülshoff, Friedemann Pardall, and Daniel Raabe.

In 2010 I transferred to ArtEZ Arnhem (NL) to study jazz & pop music. There I received lessons as a jazz & pop cellist with Michael Gustorff, Frank Sichmann, and René Creemers, while also continuing classical cello lessons with René Berman. In addition, I expanded my skills on, among others, the piano with Clemens Horn, Robert-Jan Vermeulen, and Philipp Rüttgers, and as a singer with Hartog Eysman. In the summer of 2014 I graduated from ArtEZ with a “Bachelor of Music”.

Since 2014 I have been living in Cologne (GER). Here I studied jazz & pop music at the "Hochschule für Musik und Tanz". At the beginning of 2017 I received my master’s degree with the best possible final grade of "1.0". In Cologne I was taught a wide range of music-related skills by, among others, Jörg Lehnardt, Anette von Eichel, Michael Rappe, Stephan Scheuss, and Dieter Manderscheid.

From 2011 onwards, I founded several pop and rock bands with self-written repertoire, including the string pop trio Almost Under, the progressive rock band Floodhead, the reggae band SD'n'O, and the acoustic pop duo Paul&Mike.

Since the beginning of 2018, my artistic focus has mainly been on my own projects as a cellist, singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and interdisciplinary concept artist under the stage name "Plush Rebel". These include, for example, my progressive dub-rock solo album On Top of a Bridge, released in 2021, my cross-cultural instrumental duo with oud player Sufian Ararah, my singer-songwriter duo "P.R. Unplugged", and my newly founded dub rock trio. If you would like to find out more about my work as "Plush Rebel", please visit the website www.worldofpr.de.

In addition, I repeatedly take part in a wide variety of other ensembles on a project basis, from jazz trio to orchestra, from singer-songwriter act to electro-pop band. I am also regularly active as a composer, studio musician, and producer, and have gained extensive experience in interdisciplinary working—especially in several major theatre productions in the Netherlands, as a live musician for silent films, as well as in collaborations with visual artists, fashion designers, dancers, and filmmakers.

For a few examples of my musical activities in recent years, feel free to take a look at my video and audio references!