About

Bernhard is an Austrian drummer / percussionist and a medical doctor in metropolitan Los Angeles.

He is a busy performer and recording musician, a current student of contemporary music at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, and works as an emergency physician in different hospitals in California.

To him, music and the science of medicine share a common goal: to make the people and the individual feel better.

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Born and raised in Austria, Europe, Bernhard has been exposed to contemporary as well as classical music from an early age on, which has not only shaped his musical background but also his personality. Hence, his versatile way of drumming is not limited to a certain genre but rather a blend of scholarly structure paired with intuition and stylistic freedom. He considers himself a hybrid drummer-percussionist, who loves to incorporate a variety of percussive elements to the modern drum set, creating a two-in-one instrument with a fusion of sounds: down to earth, natural and worldly, yet modern, sparkly and fresh.

The Austrian drummer is currently doing live as well as studio performances with different bands in the greater Los Angeles area (see Demography) and recently completed a music-video with grammy-awarded, Indo-Flamenco guitarist and film composer Santhosh Chandran.

Bernhard has also played for the Bollywood singer and record label artist Rram Tasildar Shanker (T-Series, Times Music India, TTM), who is a familiar voice in the Indian film industry.

He is a requested studio musician by local bands in Los Angeles and has released singles with different bands over the last year.

Bernhard has > 15 years of experience as a performing and recording artist with numerous local gigs in CA, WI, TX , as well as in different settings in Austria and Brazil. He is an active student of drum performance/contemporary music at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood and has been a private student of the well-known percussionist Richie Gajate Garcia (Phil Collins, Diana Ross) and virtuoso drummer and professional painter Bernie Galane (European radio and TV performer, USA movie soundtracks and fusion drummer).

He holds a doctoral degree in medicine which he received from the University of Vienna, Austria, where he lived for 10 years. During his life in Vienna Bernhard performed semi-professionally for different ensembles of different genres (Funk, Brit-Pop, Austro-Pop, Reggae), recorded 2 EP’s (in traditional CD format), a demo at the Viennese audio engineering school SAE and released two singles on Soundcloud.

“It was my very first band ‘Gush Groove Colony’ that ignited my passion for drumming in my teenage years”, the musician says. With this funk-rock band he won a live performance spot at Euromusic Vienna through a band competition. It was part of a European music and merchandising festival in 1998 (a similar, but smaller version of the present NAMM show in California).

The drumming doctor, trademarked as “DocThor Rhythm”, is a hybrid species with a simple goal: to make people feel better - whether by experiencing his passion on the drums or his compassion as a medical doctor. It’s just like Jon Bayouth - a known food caterer in LA's music industry - says: “He is a professional drummer who saves lives in his free time.”