“He was a legend” Jazz Pianist Johannes Bjerregaard, dies at 52

Johannes Bjerregaard was a Danish jazz pianist, former programmer, and computer game, composer.

Bjerregaard was the Prominent Lubbock jazz musician who died at 52 years old. In 2000, Johannes Bjerregaard relocated from Denmark to Lubbock, Texas. He was introduced to the Cactus Theater shortly after arriving in West Texas thanks to his musical talent.

He was appointed the music director of the historic theater right away, where he spent years writing music and assisting others in honing their craft. Despite being a master pianist, he had advice for musicians of many genres. Johannes not only encouraged other musicians, but his colleagues also remember him for his patience.

The Philips Odyssey2 computer was Bjerregaard’s first device. A Sinclair ZX81 caught his eye a few years later, but shortly before Christmas 1982, his father gave him a Commodore 64 instead. Crazy Kong was the first game he ever played, and his other favorites included Impossible Mission and Uridium (C64).

Late in 1985, Bjerregaard began creating music for the C64. He made his first contacts throughout the course of the following year (either in the demoscene or at the Danish firm Kele Line) and was immediately hailed in Danish video game magazines. He first got in touch with the renowned Maniacs of Noise in August 1988, and in October he joined them as their first non-founding member.

OPL2

On August 29, 1994, he decided he was done with computer music but nevertheless gave Jens-Christian Huus permission to share his OPL2 demos. Bjerregaard began working for a living in 1988 in Copenhagen as a topographer with the assistance of his father. He was doing programming at the National Survey in the spring of 1996.

He moved to Austin in 2000 after getting married to a Texan. In 2003, he made another relocation to Lubbock, where he worked as a Delphi programmer for an insurance company.

Johannes Bjerregaard

He first met soprano Amber Pennington in 2009; they were wed in 2014. He was discovered by Cactus Theater sometime in 2010. As of February 5, 2018, he has also been teaching piano. He received a cancer diagnosis on August 2.

A buddy created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money due to the absence of health insurance. Due to Bjerregaard’s C64 past and Cactus present, more than 200 admirers contributed more than $20,000 in less than six weeks.

Danish Citizenship

Though he would want to maintain his Danish citizenship, the option of dual citizenship is now open to him. Bjerregaard respects preservation, fans, and remixes and was pleased to discover that many businesses gave gaming soundtracks the same priority as soundtracks for motion pictures.

By February 1998, he had informed HVSC that the “aa” sound rather than the “is used when spelling his last name. A Roland JX-3P synthesizer keyboard (sold to Huus), a Kawai M8000 MIDI keyboard, Dr. T’s KCS, and a Roland U-110 rompler were among Bjerregaard’s instruments.

He is said to have written music drivers for the Amiga, and Commodore 16, and planned to write one for a borrowed Amstrad CPC in a 1989 scene magazine, however, it is unknown what became of all that. Bjerregaard produced his JBM format and Sound Blaster/AdLib music driver V1.11 from October 1991 to March 1992, but nothing from it has been discovered in any games.

Using SMFPAK

He translated Roland MIDI files to OPL2 between March 1992 and August 21, 1993. His smf0ed software was used to construct instruments (in his INS and PAT formats). He changed these files to his MFP format to further optimize them (using smfpak). He provided the MID and MFP files, a file with sound effects in an unknown format, his driver, text instructions with sample source code in Borland C++ 3.1, and other files to the game developer. His XMI-formatted 1995 music is available.

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Johannes Bjerregaard was born in 1970 in Denmark. He holds a Danish nationality and he belongs to the white ethnicity.

Johannes Bjerregaard grew up with his sister in Grenaa. His father was a choral director, while his mother was a vocalist. Bjerregaard fell in love with jazz (even in early 1988) after his father purchased an album by Art Tatum.

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