I grew up in Vienna, Austria. There was a lot of light in my childhood - both my parents and my sister are wonderful, loving and supportive humans. Vienna is a great place to live. There is a lot of culture on offer, and things like education and healthcare are first-rate.

There was some darkness, too. When I was seven, I developed Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that gives you tics and (often painful) muscle spasms. Needless to say, being visibly different makes you an excellent candidate for occupying the lowest spot on the social totem pole. Kids can be incredibly cruel. My condition improved as I grew older, but to this day, my face and neck often decide that it would be a great idea to start twitching uncontrollably. While I have accepted that this is part of who I am, I still feel embarrassed about it.

As part of my middle class upbringing, I received piano and guitar lessons from age ten. I felt right away that music contained powerful magic that could bypass my overactive intellect and hit me straight in the heart. As soon as I could put three chords together, me, my sister, and a couple of friends started banging out some Beatles and ABBA tunes in our bedroom. It sounded atrocious, of course, but it was so much fun. Also, the experience of playing music in a “band” made me feel less socially retarded.

When I was 14 I started playing organ for Catholic church services every week (in my defense, I was young and I needed the money). It was the first time I got paid to play music (which, as a teenager, makes you feel like a serious badass). It also set off my lifelong quest to reconcile my love for spirituality and desire to connect with the divine on the one hand, and my disdain for the dogmatic bullshit of organized religion on the other. Many years later I found the perfect ‘church gig’ at Agape, a transdenominational spiritual community in Los Angeles where I’ve been a member of the house band since 2007.

After finishing high school I was too chickenshit to answer the call I felt to become a professional musician (everybody in my totally unartistic social environment had assured me it was a path towards death by starvation and/or drug addiction), so I went to university for lack of any better ideas and unenthusiastically studied languages (despite being the wrong career choice, this would come in handy later). I also worked some shit jobs for a while to pay rent. Highlights included factory assembly line work and being the ‘cleanup on aisle three’ guy in a supermarket. I think everybody should work a shit job at least once in their lives in order to fully appreciate anything that is not a shit job.

Eventually I figured that since starvation and drug addiction couldn’t possibly make things any worse, I might as well give the whole music thing a try. I got into the Conservatory of the City of Vienna and studied jazz piano. I gradually grew into my identity as a musician. I got more and more gigs, from rocking out in clubs to playing in musical theatre productions to shredding polka all night on wedding gigs (as you do when you’re Austrian). I started teaching music. I also realized that starvation and drug addiction are optional rather than required for musicians.

Life was good. I was making a living as a musician. I lived in one of the most livable cities in the world. And yet…somehow it was all a little too comfortable. I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I needed to (cliché alert) ‘go out into the world and find myself’. The problem was, I had no idea how one goes about finding oneself, so for lack of any better ideas I decided to go to a music school in Los Angeles and study for another year. While this was only supposed to be a limited engagement, as soon as I got to LA I felt at home. The air here was nutritious (metaphorically speaking) in a way that Vienna wasn’t. If you want to be an artist, or an entrepreneur, or a spiritual seeker, or ‘do your own thing’, people in Austria will look at you funny (who does he think he is?); in LA, it is totally normal. People from all over the world come here because they’ve outgrown their places of birth. This creates a creative energy, an openness to new ways of thinking and being in the world that really resonated with me. And then there’s the weather - it is perfect. Not that it’s all fun and games over here; in many ways, life is more challenging than in Vienna. But, you know - no pressure, no diamonds.

I decided to stay in Los Angeles. I navigated the immigration/green card obstacle course that every expat in the US is painfully familiar with. Through a combination of effort and luck, I found gigs and made money. I got a teaching position at the very school that had brought me to LA (Musicians Institute). Christian Klikovits’ life 2.0 slowly took shape. I learnt a lot about music, about life, about myself. Having lived in two very different cultural environments gives you a wider perspective on things, and I try to combine the best of both of the worlds I’ve lived in. I am grateful for what Austria and the US have given me.

Professionally, I like to mix it up. I’ve performed with some exceptional artists (Chaka Khan, Van Morrison, Gloria Gaynor, Ellen Greene, to name a few), at prestigious venues (Lincoln Center in New York, Musikverein in Vienna, Dorothy Chandler Theatre in Los Angeles), and in exotic locations (Malaysia, Hawaii, the Caribbean). I’ve written some tracks for a Hollywood movie, and some for TV shows. I’ve worked with or taught people from every corner of the world (as a result, I can competently swear in 15 different languages). I’ve written two instructional books for Hal Leonard and created a lot of curricular materials for Musicians Institute.

Both personally and professionally, I try to get just a little bit better every day. I don’t consider myself in competition with anybody else - only with my own previous self. I continuously practice and study, and I hope I will still do exactly that when I’m a hundred years old (I have a very long to do list).