Michael Cretu - Background

Background

Cretu was born to a Romanian father and an Austrian mother in Romania, Iasi. His uncle, Ion Voicu, a Romanian violin-player and former director of the Bucharest Philarmonic, told Michael's parents that he had talent in music and as such, he studied classical music at Liceul Nr. 2 in Bucharest in 1965 and in Paris, France, in 1968. He later attended the Academy of Music in Frankfurt, Germany, from 1975 to 1978, attaining a degree in music. Cretu was taken on as a keyboard player and producer for Frank Farian.

In the 1980s, Cretu took over production for the pop quartet Hubert Kah and started writing songs with the band leader Hubert Kemmler, achieving a number of hits. Among his other work, Cretu was also one of the producers of Mike Oldfield's 1987 album Islands and the producer of Peter Schilling's 1989 The Different Story (World of Lust and Crime) album.

In 1992 Cretu worked with Peter Cornelius on the Return to Innocence (album), to provide the guitar riffs.

For the third album, Cretu teamed up with Jens Gad to work together on Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! and launched in 1999 a new trance project Trance Atlantic Airwaves and the album The Energy of Sound.

Another band of Cretu's was called Moti Special ("Cold Days, Hot Nights"), which Cretu produced and performed with in the mid-1980s.

He owns the A.R.T. Studios in Ibiza before moving to a new mansion in the Ibiza hills. His new house, near Sant Antoni de Portmany on the western coast of Ibiza, is a Moroccan-style mansion that was designed and built by Bernd Steber and Gunter Wagner in more than nine years. It also features a brand new, state-of-the-art recording studio. The Spanish High Court deemed the house to have been built illegally and in infringement of Spanish environmental regulations which led to the €18 million villa being razed in May 2009.